Mostly Miranda
Me and You and Everyone We Know, the new film from writer-director-performance artist Miranda July, walked off with prizes at both the Sundance and Cannes film festivals. A favorite with audiences and critics, it follows an ensemble cast of characters, each of whom is longing to connect with another human being in a cold, harsh…
Les Claypool
If the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame held open voting, all-star-game-style, to determine the best players at every instrumental position, Les Claypool would rank among the top 10 bassists. Since his most popular group, Primus, wouldn’t crack a list of music history’s 500 most notable bands, Claypool’s lofty esteem is even more impressive. His…
Where to Get It
Planned Parenthood · Locations throughout Northeast Ohio · For Cuyahoga County, call: 216-961-8804 · For Summit County, call: 330-535-2671 Preterm · 12000 Shaker Boulevard, Cleveland · 216-991-4000 Family Planning Association of Northeast Ohio 54 S. State Street, Suite 203, Painesville · 440-352-0608 The Free Clinic · 12201 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland · 216-721-4010 Family Planning Services…
Backstreet Boys
Every actor in Hollywood knows that the surest route to earning awards is by playing an impaired character. From Cliff Robertson in Charly and Dustin Hoffman in Rainman to Geoffrey Rush in Shine and Billy Bob Thornton in Sling Blade, we seem drawn to performances that capture some aspect of deviation from the norm. Perhaps…
Shelby Lynne
With her head-turning looks and arresting voice, Shelby Lynne landed a record deal almost instantly when she moved to Nashville at age 18, but it was a Faustian bargain that even the devils on Music Row came to regret. As Lynne says in a phone interview from her Palm Springs home, they didn’t expect her…
Bitter Pill
At two in the morning on the fifth of July, I should be sleeping away this hangover. Instead I sit in a small room at St. Vincent Charity Hospital’s Solon branch, dressed in a thin paper gown that makes me look and feel like a human napkin. My boyfriend/complicated other and I had a “condom…
Space Cadets
It’s not hard to guess why suburbs and the people who live in them have been and continue to be the butt of so many jokes. Designed to mimic the weekend lifestyles of the rich, suburbs initially were enclaves of mostly white families who didn’t speak with their neighbors, kept women isolated in their well-scrubbed…
Fatkid Dodgeball
If you’re one of the 14 people in Cleveland who haven’t seen Fatkid Dodgeball (that’s two words, folks) yet, then you don’t know that the Columbus-based rock band has a growing legion of screaming female fans — and that’s the kind of endorsement you can’t fake. And if you need musical details, the band is…
Taming The Mighty Cuyahoga
A steamy Saturday morning in Peninsula. A parking lot alive with shimmering Spandex and glimmering alloy, bikers and rollerbladers ready to cruise pointlessly down the smooth cement path that lines the Cuyahoga River. This is where our quest began. For all the times these safe recreationists had seen this lot, they must never have seen…
On Stage
Baby — This energetic comic musical deals with the ways three very different couples handle their personal journeys, once they determine there’s a bun in the oven. The play, which had a respectable run on Broadway in the early 1980s, features a bundle of charming songs with music by David Shire and lyrics by Richard…
The Pernice Brothers
As the Pernice Brothers launch another tour, critics are once again fawning over singer-songwriter Joe Pernice’s surprising tenor (nothing like it has been heard since the Bee Gees’ Odessa) and literate lyrics. The Brothers’ fourth studio album, Discover a Lovelier You, has just been released, and at least one well-placed notice suggests that the PBs…
Outsourcing Browns Camp
Given the Browns’ no-name players and their ripening legacy of sucking, now would seem the perfect time to reach out to Cleveland fans. Turns out they may be courting Cowtown instead. Officials from Ohio’s top minor-league market met with the Browns last month in hopes of wooing the team’s training camp to Columbus as early…
On View
NEW The NEO Show — Despite its huge variety of media, this juried exhibition of 80 Northeast Ohio artists doesn’t offer enough viable alternatives to established tradition. In lieu of deeply considered art are bright colors, appealing surfaces, technical creativity, mechanical gizmos, and ingratiating effects that mostly entertain rather than nourish. Take, for example, Jason…
Fourth Annual Karaoke Contest
Competition’s heating up at C. Mulligan’s Fourth Annual Karaoke Contest. Each week, a judge picks two winners, who then advance to the final round, to be held Thursday, August 4. At the 12-person sing-off, the top two finalists will go home a few hundred dollars richer. The room is friendly, even more so at the…
Consider the Source
Consider the Source Open Triv’s mouth and Limbaugh falls out: I agree that Mike Trivisonno’s stupid [“Food Fight,” First Punch, June 29]. Apparently when sports aren’t involved, he gets all his information from Rush Limbaugh. On a recent episode, the discussion was about how Michael Moore was an out-of-touch Hollywood type, ignoring the fact that…
Style Points
When it comes to trendy eateries, long-term success can hinge on capturing just the right ratio of substance to style. Looking good is important, as is attracting the right crowd. But to keep that crowd coming back, the food and service need to be flashy too. These are the deep thoughts we entertain as we…
Felt
Does hip-hop’s irony-saturated underground really need an album’s worth of messing with Denise Huxtable? Of course not, and Felt — the all-star MC duo of Slug (Atmosphere) and Murs (Living Legends), who first teamed up for a similar non-homage to Christina Ricci — is smart enough to know it. The real tribute here is to…
Fighting Chance
Since he was nine years old and 64 pounds, Frankie “the Surgeon” Randall has been beating the snot out of his boxing opponents. But his left jabs, right hooks, and first-round knockouts are about to come to an end. At 43 years of age and 174 pounds, the eight-time former light-welterweight champ from Tennessee will…
Avoiding Extinction
Last week in Orlando, Florida, more than one influential rock band staged a reunion at House of Blues. On Thursday night, Dinosaur Jr., the indie maverick from Massachusetts, played the first show of its current tour at the venue, proving to all doubters that rock never stops. As it turns out, the very same thing…
Willie Nelson
Reggae is Willie Nelson’s latest trick. He’s turned a few others, like tackling the Great American Songbook on Stardust and releasing duets albums, most recently The Great Divide. Here, he offers a disc that began to take shape 10 years ago. It goes down easy. Produced by Don Was (who helmed Across the Borderline, one…
This Week’s Day-By-Day Picks
Thursday, July 14 Like the White Stripes, the Moaners have only a guitar player and a drummer. Unlike the Stripes, Melissa Swingle and Laura King were never married. Nor do they claim to be siblings. And King is a helluva better drummer than Meg White. On their debut album, Dark Snack, the Moaners display a…
Fookin’ A
In addition to the ever-popular “bloody wankers” and “daft cunts,” there are two somewhat more charitable insults that Britons hating on their nation’s dominant rock bands like to sling. “Bed-wetters” is directed at overly earnest, sensitive swoon merchants like Keane, Coldplay, and Snow Patrol. “Students,” meanwhile, is the derisive tag hung on Franz Ferdinand, Muse,…
The All-American Rejects
At best, the All-American Rejects inspire qualified praise. Their champions say things like “Solid stuff, if you’re just looking for fun” or “Other bands have done this better, but Blink-182 broke up, and Weezer’s new singles are virulently stupid, so here we are.” their detractors waste time, because the evolutionary process takes care of cute,…
Gentle Giants
Longtime fans who lament They Might Be Giants’ recent foray into children’s music are missing the point. The fun-lovin’, goof-spewin’ group — led by John Flansburgh and John Linnell — has been making insanely catchy songs for big and little kids for two decades now. It just wasn’t marketed to tots before. But with Here…
Strange Brew
It took four Jackasses, a former gun-wielding clown, a serial prank caller, and the bassist from a disco cover band to complete The Exotic Sounds of the Alter Boys, a surprisingly traditional rock album. The disc is a throwback to a time when bands were expected to play a couple of slow songs for the…
Band of Bees/The Redwalls
The Buzzcocks’ sly Pete Shelley was “surfing on a wave of nostalgia for an age yet to come,” but for most backward-looking bands of recent decades, the ’60s will do just fine. And ’60s necrophilia is practically a tradition compared to the current ’80s vogue, which explains why it’s getting so damned good. The Isle…
Gaelic Storm
WED 7/20 Órla Fallon blushes if you suggest that Celtic Woman has helped globalize the Gaelic ballads her grandmother taught her in the remote woodlands of Ireland. But after the group’s self-titled CD came out in March — with a PBS special on its heels — Fallon (pictured center) discovered that her homeland’s music played…
Patriot Games
The tipsy soldier double-fisting beers said it all, without saying a word: This night was about Coors Light and combat fatigues. Toby Keith was in town, and the wobbly commando was getting shitfaced for America at Blossom last Friday night. He was joined by thousands of fellow piss-drunk patriots. We’re not sure what crowd members…
The Boo Radleys
As this best-of compilation attests, the Boo Radleys were one of the first bands to realize that there wasn’t much difference between the sludge of Dinosaur Jr. and the white noise of My Bloody Valentine (at least in 1989). The group made its name by infusing the post-Loveless world with explorations that were part Lee…
Multitasking Marvels
SUN 7/17 Jeff Guise (pictured) can ace college-prep classes, attend student-leadership conferences, and still compete at cross-country meets for Westlake High School. So at last year’s Sky Bank Cleveland Triathlon, it was nothing new for the 17-year-old senior to manage multiple events. “My main problem was that I didn’t have as much time on the…
The Story Ends
Rosavelt, Cleveland’s top roots-rock band, is breaking up, but the show will go on, even after the group goes out with a bang. “We will no longer perform under the name Rosavelt,” says singer-guitarist Chris Allen. “It was just time to move on to other projects. We had a great eight-year run, something that we’re…
Monet.Madrid.Madagascar.
Monet.Madrid.Madagascar. will play the Vans Warped Tour next week, but don’t let that give you the wrong impression. The Cleveland sextet isn’t punk by a long shot. But the group is good enough that the powers that be gave them a shot — which, in the shady business of rock, is rare and remarkable. Monet.Madrid.Madagascar.…
Wild About Harry
FRI 7/15 Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the sixth of seven planned books in a series that’s become the century’s greatest publishing phenomenon, goes on sale at 12:01 a.m. Saturday. To celebrate, local bookstores host wizard-friendly events this weekend. To mark the book’s arrival, Legacy Village turns into a magic-themed commune, fronted by Joseph-Beth…
Strhess Tour
The Warped Tour is fine, but it has a little filler. The Strhess Tour, on the other hand, boasts only five headliner-quality acts, and they’re all hard and heavy. If you’re just joining us, the tour is the brainchild of Cleveland-based rock artist Derek Hess, whose involvement dates back to the fliers he made to…
Amentia
Upon first spin, Flower of Flesh and Blood sounds like a CliffsNotes version of the Headbanger’s Ball in recent years: dizzying blast beats, growled vocals that occasionally approach a black metal snarl, dark harmonies befitting the Deftones, and some fleet-fingered instrumental passages. Recorded in 2003, the album also includes a pair of tunes from Amentia’s…
Jam on It
SUN 7/17 Jam-band music is all about songs that exceed radio’s traditional three-and-a-half-minute time limit. Sunday’s Big Summer Classic at Blossom Music Center (1145 West Steels Corners Road in Cuyahoga Falls) features some of the genre’s giants. (Show time is 3 p.m. Tickets are $25 to $37.50; call 216-241-5555.) To help you figure out when…
The Raspberries
Yes, you can go home again — and again. The Raspberries reunited last November, playing to a sold-out crowd of baby boomers at the House of Blues. A follow-up show there on New Year’s Eve once again brought a full house, confirming that this ’70s power-pop band, whose last hit was more than 30 years…
Chocolate Kisses
Roald Dahl’s inner child was evidently a contrary lad — precocious, dark-minded, contemptuous of adult supervision, and fueled by a sense of justice that often proceeded via cruel whim. In Dahl’s twisty children’s stories, villains throw kids out of windows, beautiful women turn out to be hideous witches in disguise, and parents are eaten alive.…
Big Summer Classic
The Zooma Tour — this summer’s traveling equivalent of the gigantic, jam-friendly Bonnaroo fest in Tennessee — was canceled before it got off the ground, leaving legions of hacky-sack aficionados bumming about the first non-Phishy summer in years. For many of those fans, the Big Summer Classic tour can fill at least some of that…
Miracle on Ice
If you’re short on reasons to be grateful these days, look no further than March of the Penguins, the astonishing documentary from first-time director Luc Jacquet. Hard times may have befallen you, but at least you are not a penguin, an animal destined to repeat a devastating sequence of events nine months out of every…
Adrian Belew
Jimi Hendrix proved that the electric guitar was about more than amplified strings, and no player since has pursued the shrieking spirits lurking inside the demon box with the fervor — and the success — of Adrian Belew. Pachydermal wails, banshee shrieks, and wild, six-string assaults are as commonplace in his playing as secondhand blues…
Always a Bridesmaid
If Vince Vaughn puts any effort into what he’s doing, it doesn’t show, which is perhaps one of the benefits of always appearing to be hung over. The man probably has to check the bags under his eyes at the airport, and he’s about as in shape as a toddler’s fistful of Play-Doh. This is…
French Kicks
Demographically, these hip indie rockers are mostly indistinguishable from their dime-a-dozen New York peers. They’re young and handsome, and dress like bright prep-school students on a weekend bender courtesy of their dads’ credit cards. Musically, the French Kicks are a slightly different breed. Rather than doling out the same scratchy guitar strums and diffident-sounding mumbles…
