A Royal Shame
Garry Marshall is at it again. The director of Pretty Woman, Beaches, and the original Princess Diaries has returned to peddle his particular brand of &3252;berschmaltz in The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement, in which he disguises an insidious worship of wealth and privilege as a “feel-good” comedy about a wacky girl whose transition from…
Burning Brides
Because not every member of the O.C. generation relates to earnest suburban skateboarders and Morrissey-worshiping alt-rockers, there’s the Burning Brides. Handily representing the bad-seed kids who’re always skipping class for a smoke or swigs from a 40 in the parking lot, the Philly trio epitomizes the latest wave of rock and rollers oozing out of…
Heimlich’s Maneuver
On June 22, 1980, the doctor presiding over the otherwise tranquil emergency room of Lima Memorial Hospital saved the life of a two-year-old girl. In so doing, Dr. Edward Patrick rewrote medical history. Erin Snow had fallen into the water after her parents’ raft capsized on Mirror Lake. She had been underwater for 20 minutes,…
Shake & Bake
There are two kinds of people in the world: Those who love Shakespeare and those who can’t figure out what the hell his characters are talking about. Let’s face it, his plays would be a lot more popular among common folk if he had written them to last maybe about three minutes each. At that…
Fishbone
For 20 years, through lineup changes that could rival Spinal Tap’s; helplessly watching white, manufactured ska-punk outfits climb the pop charts; and undergoing its own search for truth and soul, Fishbone has persevered, for one simple reason: talent. Angelo Moore, Norwood Fisher, and Walter Kibby continue to helm one of the most electrifyingly organic stage…
Juror’s Burden
Carmella Juarbe will turn on her television tonight [August 11] and watch herself commit the single act she regrets most in her life: signing a guilty verdict in the double-murder trial of Mark Ducic. Ducic got life in prison. Juarbe, a 39-year-old restaurant promoter and mother, got a conscience that is still shaken two months…
Diabolical Ditties
The trouble with Broadway musicals is there’s never enough cannibalism. Of course, composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim did what he could to correct that error back in 1979, when his Sweeney Todd put into song the story of a sociopathic barber who snuffed his customers and passed the corpses to his wife, who turned them…
.38 Special
Today’s pop stars could learn a thing or two from .38 Special. First, how to write good songs that stand the test of time. The southern rock band still has a good half-dozen tunes in rotation on classic-rock stations, and out of those, only “Rockin’ Into the Night” sounds dated. Second, three years between albums…
No Respect
No Respect Everyone should have such problems: I was surprised and excited to see a review of the upcoming album by one of my favorite bands, Kittie [Playback, July 21]. However, once I started reading, I became annoyed with the same crap that people can’t seem to get past. Wow, Kittie is a female band?…
On Stage
Last Call Cleveland’s Corvette Summer — When it comes to stand-up or sketch comedy, wielding a sledgehammer wears thin pretty quickly if more nuanced material isn’t mixed in. This is where the talented group Last Call Cleveland appears to be mired. Integrating live skits and video segments with characters and snatches of scenes overlapping from…
Northern State
The first female answer to the Beastie Boys was the Big Apple quartet Luscious Jackson, which released one great EP on the Beasties’ own label and then pursued an erratic career throughout the ’90s before disintegrating. Their place has presumably been taken now by Northern State, another crew of smart, sassy, and proudly Y-chromosomeless New…
Crime Family Values
City Councilman Mike Polensek speaks of his enemies with awe and admiration. “I’d have to stay awake at night with one eye open to catch what these guys are doing,” he says. “The big-city guys got nothing on these guys down there.” The subject is corruption. Or more to the point, Democrats’ diminishing skills in…
On View
Andrew Wyeth: The Helga Pictures — Andrew Wyeth created 240 images of his Pennsylvania neighbor Helga Testorf between 1971 and 1985. His obsessiveness resulted in work imbued with tension and emotion that smoldered between the observer and the observed, and bordered at times on the voyeuristic. Helga is depicted nude and clothed, reclining and standing,…
Mavis Staples
In the ’70s, guitarist-vocalist Roebuck “Pops” Staples and his family gospel group joined other black musicians immersed in the social and cultural upheaval of the time. Alongside such artists as Curtis Mayfield, the Staples Singers belted out tunes meant to inspire and sometimes challenge the listener, racking up hits along the way. Up front most…
Elvick Has Left the Planet
Roger Elvick, an ex-con widely regarded as the creator of redemptionism, a conspiracy-theory-laced financial scam that grew out of the antigovernment and white-supremacist movements of the 1980s, was indicted by Cuyahoga County last year. He’s accused of aiding local redemptionists in “paper terrorism” campaigns involving false bankruptcy filings against cops and judges (“Color Scheme,” January…
Eggs-actly Right
It’s been a long time since we could count on Mom to interrupt our Sunday-morning reveries with a big family breakfast. Nowadays, in fact, about the only place we ever awaken to the aromas of sizzling bacon and freshly brewed coffee is at the all-night diner, when we accidentally nod off while waiting for our…
Taking Back Sunday
Taking Back Sunday’s second album proves that what did not kill the Long Island quintet — the sudden and acrimonious departure of two members last year — has made it far stronger. Strengthened by new guitarist-singer Fred Mascherino and bassist Matt Rubano, Where You Want to Be loses the gawky adolescent yelps and knobby riffs…
Turn the Page
Experimental filmmaker Nico B. is infatuated with Bettie Page. And who can blame him? With her bangalicious hairdo, sexy garters-and-stockings get-up, and girl-next-door smile, the ’50s pinup queen oozed personality. She was simultaneously ooh-la-la hot and playfully innocent. But Nico isn’t into that side of Page. He’s into a later phase of her career, when…
Cold Comfort
If you haven’t yet indulged in a scoop of freshly made Italian gelato, don’t blame restaurateurs Valerio Iorio or Al Cefaretti: Thanks to them, gelaterias are popping up all over. Iorio, owner of Valerio’s in Little Italy and Cefaretti’s partner in the intimate Osteria de Valerio and Al, in the Warehouse District, opened the region’s…
Various Artists
If Alejandro Escovedo’s life has been an open book, his music has provided the soundtrack — chapters of which recount his father’s move north from Mexico, his ex-wife’s suicide in 1991, his divorce from his second wife in 2001, and his diagnosis of hepatitis C last year. Having bad stuff happen to you, again and…
This Week’s Day-By-Day Picks
Thursday, August 12 Ever notice how Irish festivals always emphasize the music? We suspect it’s because either folks aren’t too crazy about boxty or Irish music is just so damn good. Looking over the lineup for Irish Summerfest of Euclid — the Saw Doctors, Blackthorn, and the Fenians top the list — we think it’s…
From Ink to Emo
The true talent of Cleveland artist Derek Hess has always been his ability to discover the beauty and heart within bands that most people see only as harsh noisemongers. As a concert booker at the now-defunct Euclid Tavern in the 1990s, he brought rowdy bands like Cop Shoot Cop and the Jesus Lizard to Cleveland.…
Luciano
Born a simple country boy in rural Jamaica, Jepther McClymont, aka Luciano, has become the premier roots singer of his generation. As one of the few top-shelf artists to hold firmly to the traditional reggae sound in a dancehall-dominated scene, he has earned the mantle once worn by Jacob Miller and Dennis Brown. By now,…
Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines
Fortysomething Bob Ferguson still feels like a wide-eyed first-grader when he’s glued to the TV, watching his favorite horror shows. Ever since he was a kid — when Ghoulardi was the area’s most revered host — he’s been addicted to boob-tube screamfests. “For a great deal of my life, I’ve been able to remain that…
Secret Soul
History is written by the victors or, in the case of pop-music history, by the people who heard the victors. We know the hits, and we know the records that sold terribly at the time but became influential later on. It’s interesting, however, to look between the cracks of history and see what could have…
Plasma
Plasma’s free-range funk takes on enough different shapes to fill a geometry textbook: Obtuse jams, head-in-the-clouds pop, even sweaty stoner metal all elbow for position on this diffuse debut. “I am so high, can’t get over it,” frontman Jason Blair wails early on, and true to his words, Plasma is prone to playful overindulgence. The…
Stage Plight
8/13-11/14 Walter Novak shoots rock-and-roll outlaws . . . with his Nikon camera. His quick draw on the zoom lens fuels Hello Cleveland! Classic Rock Heroes Captured on Film, concert photos of David Bowie, Blondie, Mushroomhead, and 25 others. “I try to capture the personality, to see their emotions and sweat,” says Novak, Scene’s staff…
O Brothers, Where Art Thou?
With just a few months before one of the most hotly contested presidential elections in history, the concert trail has sometimes seemed indistinguishable from the campaign, what with the Punkvoter tour, various anti-Bush concerts, and a get-out-the-vote tour scheduled for this fall that will feature Dave Matthews, Pearl Jam, and others. Motivated largely by the…
The Interns
If one good song is all the pretext a record company needs to put a band on radio and TV, the Interns have more than enough to make it. If there’s another American Pie movie, they can play the role of New Found Glory, and “No Leg to Stand On” would work nicely in a…
Sisters in Sweat
8/13-8/15 Mary Jane Chichester doesn’t want another blackout to pull the plug on Run, Jane, Run. The multistate power outage occurred the day before last year’s festival of golf tournaments, volleyball matches, and 10K runs. Competitors still showed up, even though some of the coed participants complained that they couldn’t take showers or blow-dry their…
Boulder Rolls to a Halt
No one in a Dying Fetus tee will ever be seated at the right hand of the Lord, but if heaven is closed to headbangers, Boulder frontman Jamie Walters’s East Side home is the next best thing. Walking through Walters’s pad feels like stepping into the pages of an old Hit Parader. Everything seems to…
Home, Sick Home
SUN 8/15 James LaRue has uncovered enough hidden horrors in the home to make us want to take refuge on the relatively safer confines of downtown streets. The National Center for Healthy Housing advisory board member (and former TV and radio host known as the HouseMender) says, “There are so many triggers in the residential…
Vacancy Filled
Cle-punkers the Vacancies have added drummer Angelo Merendino, replacing Sean Watkins. Merendino has spent the last two years in Cleveland after touring with Nashville rockabilly groups. The skinsman has a jazz background, but prefers to hit hard. Bassist Jeff Kovatch says that Merendino’s learning curve was short. “He’s a photographer, and he’d been shooting pictures…
Strings Attached
TUE 8/17 There are no guitars on the Velvet Teen’s new album, Elysium. There is, however, a 12-minute song called “Chimera Obscurant.” Is the formerly plugged-in California pop-rock trio getting all proggy on us or what? “We’d been wanting to add more instrumentation and production elements to [our sound],” explains frontman Judah Nagler (pictured, center).…
Freaky Flow & MC Flipside
Dynamic drum & bass duo Freaky Flow and Flipside complete their last touring gig together in Cleveland on Friday, August 13. Even for those who think Flow rips Hype’s scratching or that Flipside’s MCing is the only thing freaky about the duo, it’s a show no head should miss. After seven years of tight touring,…
Party Train
Oh, Janis. Oh, gorgeous, outrageous, soul-ripping, rockin’ bluesy momma Janis Joplin. She’s a volcano. She’s a tsunami. She’s a fearless, reckless, raging American beauty. Watch her tear open her chest to reveal her hot, pulsing wounds. Watch her rage with burning, glorious light. Watch her smile that sweet Janis smile and wrap you into her…
Static-X
Mention the name Static-X to metal freaks, and invariably they position their hands about 18 inches over the top of their heads and blurt out, “Yeah, the dude with the hair.” Not since four musicians with dodgy abilities slapped on some whiteface makeup and named themselves Kiss has a band been known so much for…
Bizarre Love Triangle
You may have already heard the stories about A Home at the End of the World. In what many viewers have deemed a big loss, Colin Farrell’s penis no longer appears in the film. The official line is that test audiences found it too distracting, though that seems unlikely, given that the movie centers around…
Midwest Reggae Fest
The second Saturday in August is when you cram the cooler full of beer, roll yourself a righteous spliff or two, and head east to Huntsburg for an irie afternoon. The 13th Annual Midwest Reggae Fest affords all the ingredients one could desire for such an occasion: outdoor stage, swimming, volleyball, horseshoes, vendors. The music’s…
Deck Heads
Most boys seem to tumble down the assembly line with their main switch factory-preset to Aggression. Toys are for throwing, army men are for melting, and eventually grown males consider punching each other senseless, hurling deadly bombs, or surreptitiously undermining one another to be completely reasonable forms of discourse. But prior to adulthood, during those…
Little Milton
When Little Milton’s 1965 single “We’re Gonna Make It” hit the airwaves, people reputedly swarmed record shops asking for the new Bobby Bland tune. Which was no doubt just fine with the brain trust at Chess Records, who saw in the St. Louis-based singer-guitarist the ideal chart competition for the superstar Bland — pipes capable…
