Who’s the Devil?
The scene was pure Kucinich. Two years ago, the congressman stood in the shadows of Jacobs Field to boldly announce a bill that would force baseball owners to air games on free TV. There was logic to the move. Since pro sports are among America’s leading welfare moms — in Cleveland alone, they’ve received about…
Radical Rethink
If you visit Cologne, Germany, and venture forth a few blocks from a square called Barbarossaplatz, tucked along a residential side street — just past the pastry shop with the smiling doughnut stickered on the glass — you’ll find a store called A-Musik. If you’re a fan of experimental or electronic music, you’ll probably have…
Nancy Sinatra
Nancy Sinatra doesn’t want to be Debbie Harry or Marianne Faithfull or even Nick Cave. Fact is, everybody wants to be Nancy Sinatra. And, it turns out, not the Nancy of Sugartown and all those Lee Hazlewood numbers, but the Nancy who lives today, apparently undiminished in attitude. The Nancy who is, to paraphrase the…
Capitol Offense
It’s one thing to watch Dennis Kucinich on the campaign trail; it’s another to write a parody about him. “That was our total bugaboo in the primary season,” says comedian Elaina Newport. “[Kucinich] rhymes with spinach, but how do you put spinach in a song?” Such are the challenges facing the Capitol Steps, the 30-member…
Work It Out
A motley conglomeration of personalities has descended upon Miami’s American Airlines Arena for a massive press conference on the eve of the MTV Video Music Awards. There are celebrity freaks (Victoria Gotti and her sons), flavor-of-the-month teeny poppers (Hilary Duff), rock-and-roll non-entities (Hoobastank), fledgling stars (Kanye West), and over-the-hill acts (New Edition). Scarce are the…
Asylum for Shut-Ins
The Doctor knows what’s wrong: “You love the sickness, the torment, the horror,” says the host of Asylum for Shut-Ins, the cable-access horror-movie clip show that ran in Cleveland from 1987 to 1992 and lives on as a cult phenomenon. “I have the cure for what you need: Video psychotherapy. Follow me into the darkness.”…
This Week’s Day-By-Day Picks
Thursday, October 28 Gozu starts out as a Tarantino-esque mob adventure, with a young Japanese gangster ordered to kill his mentally scarred mentor. But after the (seemingly dead) body is lost, the film steers into David Lynch territory, complete with nonsense-spewing locals, a lapping cow’s head, and a bizarre birth scene. It doesn’t make a…
Cult of the Manimals
It’s hard to deny being a bit peculiar when presenting oneself as half man, half animal, and so Larry the Wolf doesn’t even try. “I think I’ve always been a little bit eccentric,” the stocky Manimals frontman chuckles from the living room of his Westlake home. “My father, who loves to misquote things — he’d…
All Misfits, All Night
It’s the nightmare before Halloween, and the horror business at hand consists of Akron’s hardcore stars playing Misfits songs all night. Hear how they turned into a Martian. Shriek as they grasp for your skull. Gasp as Vampira bares her teeth. Then grab another PBR pounder — Annabell’s has them cheap — and sing along…
Football Follies
“It can’t get any worse,” says Terry Pluto, discussing the latest fumbles and stumbles of the Cleveland Browns. “This is probably the worst situation the NFL has ever inflicted on a city.” There are many, many reasons why the team sucks, says Pluto. And in his new book, False Start: How the New Browns Were…
They’ll Drink to That
Akron-Cleveland roots-rockers the Whiskeyhounds have agreed to a three-album deal with Columbus-based Bandaloop Records. The pact includes a solo album from frontman Roger Hoover. “We’re excited about this band,” says Bandaloop chief Bill Hutchison, whose label has gained national airplay for the Cleveland metalcore outfit 13 Faces. “Roger Hoover is an unbelievably talented songwriter and…
Billy & the Bullets
A glance at the non-original songs on Billy & the Bullets might lead one to believe this band is short on adventure: Covering tunes like Carl Perkins’ “Honey Don’t,” Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues,” and Tex Williams’ “Smoke That Cigarette” doesn’t quite constitute going out on a limb for a rockabilly combo. But the four…
Rock What You Know
FRI 10/29 Full-time writer and part-time guitarist Dave Barry admits to drawing groupies when he’s on the road with his band, the Rock Bottom Remainders. Most of them, however, are “librarians between 45 and 70 years old,” sighs the Miami Herald columnist, who’s on his first hiatus in 30 years. “If they throw underwear onstage,…
Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra
The passing of Afrobeat pioneer Fela Anikulapo-Kuti in 1997 sparked a wave of renewed interest in the sound, as Fela’s politically motivated Nigerian funk movement began to work its way into the sample-based worlds of hip-hop and house music. New York-based multi-instrumentalist Martín Perna took it a step further with his vision of a fully…
Conya Doss
Conya Doss has a voice that makes every day seem like Sunday morning: It’s supple, lithe, and soothing as a warm bath. At times, though, this works against the young soul songstress, whose vocals can lull listeners right to sleep. But on her second album, Doss adds a bit more spunk and sass to her…
Death Pedal
SAT 10/30 The third-annual Ghost Ride happens on Saturday, and its organizers are confident it will rock most righteously. “The first two, we’re counting as successes,” says organizer Jim Sheehan. “Nobody got hurt, nobody got lost, nobody got arrested.” The 10-mile night ride features costumed motorcyclists hitting the Flats before retiring to Ohio City Cycles…
Charlie Hunter Trio
A quick look at the numbers reveals that jazz guitarist Charlie Hunter is at least 33 percent more axeman than most. Hunter plays an eight-string — that’s about 15 percent more guitar than even seven-string nü-metal shredders — simultaneously providing bass and lead on albums like Herbie Hancock drummer Mike Clark’s Actual Proof. As a…
The Fright House
SAT 10/30 Shortly before his assassination in 1881, President James Garfield called his Secretary of War into the Oval Office. A believer in horoscopes and tales about Ghosts of the White House, Garfield asked to hear the secretary’s prophecy again. “He had some premonition about [Garfield’s] death,” says Allison Sharaba, the operations manager of the…
Deerhoof
Deerhoof doesn’t really make any sense, but the band’s members likely don’t lose much sleep over that fact. Instead, the San Francisco quartet calmly lures listeners with an unconsciously upbeat clusterfuck of sound. Playful melodies dodge and weave between the lilting cadence of singer Satomi Matsuzaki’s vocals, as they skip dreamily past roaring guitars, thumping…
Rock Hard
SAT 10/30 Unlike many bass players, World Gone Mad’s Guy Bechter (pictured second from left) doesn’t hide in the shadows onstage. As the self-described “driving force of the band,” he flaunts his bass-in-your-face attitude. “I put on my own show inside the band’s shows,” he says. “Without losing touch of the music.” Formed nearly six…
Sondre Lerche
Sondre Lerche possesses the type of adorable personality that makes Care Bears seem like juvenile delinquents. The Bergen, Norway native’s online journal expounds on the virtues of green papaya — “Such a good fruit when eaten at the right time and place. Great for breakfast, maybe with a bagle [sic] and cream cheese” — with…
Messed Around
Ray, director Taylor Hackford’s 15-years-in-the-making biography of Ray Charles, begins as you might hope: with 1959’s “What’d I Say (Part 1)” pulsing on the soundtrack, the organ’s low moans building toward that familiar, funky frenzy. It almost serves as an early climax, a bracing thrill served up before a word of dialogue has been delivered.…
Camper Van Beethoven
Camper Van Beethoven The sound of Jonathan Segel’s violin went a long way in distinguishing Camper Van Beethoven from other ’80s alt-rock bands, but Segel himself was long gone by the time the band called it quits. The culprit? Too many songwriting head-butts with Camper frontman David Lowery. And as Segel says, “The singer gets…
A Cut Above
It takes mighty big stones to name your horror movie Saw, knowing full well that that’s popular fan-slang for Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a movie worshiped by gorehounds worldwide. When you take that name for your own, you had damn well better deliver a memorable, worthy contender to the horror canon. First-time feature director…
The Groovie Ghoulies
Straight-ahead Ramonesy rockin’ punk will never go out of style, but it’s always a pleasure to see a band getting the idea exactly right, as with San Francisco’s Groovie Ghoulies. The Ghoulies know that it’s not enough to be influenced just by the late New York foursome’s fast songs and simple guitar riffs; to make…
Icky, Icky, Icky
Even before the movie begins, as the New Line logo is still coalescing on a dark screen, a man speaks the soundtrack. He’s talking about reincarnation and about what he would do if his wife, named Anna, were to die and return as a bird insisting it was indeed his deceased beloved. “I’d believe her,”…
Minus the Bear
Picture some weird teen-romance flick in which a lonely kid goes on an oceanside vacation with his family and winds up falling in love with the girl of his dreams against a soft-focus backdrop of rain showers, pounding surf, and long, scenic drives up the coast. Now slice up the celluloid with shards of melody…
Father of the Pride
As anyone knows who’s munched $35/lb. popcorn while taking in a romantic comedy at the local gigaplex, the love the two leads will eventually express is in direct proportion to the degree they hate each other at the beginning. Once the sparks fly, we know they’ll be staring at each other over the morning Froot…
Brian Jonestown Massacre
Over the course of 15 years, Los Angeles’ Brian Jonestown Massacre has been one of the best, most prolific rock and roll bands, having released a dozen or so full-length records (and a dizzying number of limited-edition singles and EPs) that range from driving ’60s-tinged psychedelic R&B to blissful shoegazer rock. Unfortunately, the group is…
On Stage
A Bright Room Called Day — Those who draw parallels between Hitler and George W. are usually dismissed as paranoid leftists who hate their country — the same kinds of things that were said of German citizens sweating bullets about the rise of the Nazi Party in the 1930s. This is the milieu where Tony…
A Perfect Circle
A Perfect Circle’s eMOTIVe is the angriest chill-out album since Nine Inch Nails’ The Downward Spiral. Inspired by current events, this side project from Tool frontman Maynard James Keenan covers classic songs of uprising, greed, and protest, and in a detached manner that’s mostly a welcome departure. Black Flag’s “Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie,” one of the…
Playing Doctor
There are no shortcuts to a career in medicine. First-year residents at Jewish Hospital in Cincinnati accepted this. It consoled them through 100-hour workweeks, each one more blurred by blood and disease than the last. Residencies are as much a test of faith and stamina as they are of skill. To the class of 1975,…
On View
NEW Dukes and Angels — This exhibition transports modern viewers to the Court of Burgundy in the 14th and 15th centuries. Included are luxury objects belonging to the first Valois dukes of Burgundy, Philip the Bold and John the Fearless: portraits of the dukes, illuminated manuscripts (such as Aristotle’s Ethics), crowns, stone sculptures, and devotional…
UNKLE
When the great Electronica Rush of ’97-’98 hit U.S. soil, it often sounded like the space-age promises of the Jetsons coming to fruition just in time to justify Y2K. UNKLE, the project of Mo’ Wax label guru James Lavelle, especially captured this futuristic mindset; 1998’s Psyence Fiction melded the Matrix-style techno-rock with DJ Shadow’s trip-hop…
Red & Blue Newsroom
The Plain Dealer has spent tons of ink writing about the “five Ohios,” explaining that the state is not the singular entity Beltway geeks presume it to be. Now comes evidence that there’s two Plain Dealers: the editorial staff, and Publisher Alex Machaskee. Last week, the daily’s editorial board overwhelmingly voted to endorse John Kerry.…
Symon Stays
Four p.m. is “family dinner” time for the staff at Lola. The Tremont restaurant is known for chef-owner Michael Symon’s imaginative and eclectic dishes — rabbit strudel and lobster pierogi, for example — but nothing of the sort is offered on a recent weeknight. Tonight, it’s hot dogs and French fries, laid out picnic-style on…
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
Once Nick Cave finished his last major round of detox a few years back, he instituted a daily routine of getting up at 7 a.m. to write music obsessively. And it was starting to show. Cave’s discs since 1997 — often intense, achingly beautiful detours from the Bad Seeds’ sex ‘n’ death trip — were…
An Ass-Kicking Spared
An Ass-Kicking Spared Why Kucinich leaves no room for debate: Dennis Kucinich’s claim that he can’t debate his opponents, Ed Herman and Barbara Ferris, at the City Club because it’s outside his district is a bare-faced lie [First Punch, October 20]. I was a volunteer for Kucinich’s 1996 campaign when he defeated incumbent Martin Hoke.…
Ladies of the Left
“You know that feeling when you see [President Bush] on TV, and you feel like you’re gonna throw up?” Le Tigre’s Kathleen Hanna asks, sprawled across the conference-room floor of her publicist’s Manhattan office. “I feel like I can’t even look at him anymore because I get so physically freaked out and upset. I don’t…
R. Kelly and Jay-Z
It’s certainly not the best release of 2004, but Unfinished Business is easily the most confusing. Why would R. Kelly fans want another of his discs just two months after he dropped a pair of mediocre ones? Why would Jay-Z agree to a joint album and tour when he obviously believes his accused pedophile of…
