Suicide Boys
Violence looms in Paradise Now, director Hany Abu-Assad’s gripping film about a pair of Palestinian suicide bombers preparing for their first and last mission. From the opening shot of a young woman crossing an Israeli checkpoint to the final, fateful bus ride, the potential for bloodshed hangs heavy in the air. Yet, in one of…
Takin’ Out the Trash
Grab your ankles, music fans, ’cause the record industry’s gonna screw us again. As we know, labels are skilled at finding new ways to waste your money. Lately, it’s the bogus re-release. Take Nine Inch Nails’ landmark debut, Pretty Hate Machine, scheduled for reissue later this month. Perhaps the most influential album ever to come…
The Clientele
“Ravishing” doesn’t begin to describe Strange Geometry. “Fatigued” might. It would be hard to argue that this British band’s second album is not a lovely experience. Sweeping lullabies like “Since K Got Over Me,” “E.M.P.T.Y.,” and “Impossible” are perfectly ’60s — orchestrated pop reboots wrapped in warm strings and delicately plucked, chiming guitar lines. And…
Hope Floats
SUN 11/20 Behind the wheel of Holiday, his 60-foot cabin cruiser, Wayne Bratton has shuttled Boatgating customers to every Browns home game since 1982. From Trident Marine in the Flats and then up the Cuyahoga River, the veteran sailor pulls up to the docks northwest of Browns Stadium a half-hour before kickoff. It’s business as…
Sound Advice
Akron’s 20goto10 makes moody synth-pop that reimagines the glory days of new wave. Singer Sara Eugene shares some of her favorites. What have you been listening to lately? I listened to Ladytron on the way to work today, for whatever “cool equity” that gets me. There’s a great band from N.Y.C. called Jupiter One that’s…
Neil Diamond
The thought of Rick Rubin producing Neil Diamond quickens the pulse of those who value Americana. God knows that Diamond, one of the last exponents of Brill Building craftsmanship, fits into the Americana concept. But only God knew how well he would do under Rubin, who in the ’90s gave Johnny Cash his last and…
Flight Plan
11/17-11/23 David Whitehead has taught enough flying classes to spot future pilots during their Introductory Flight Lessons. “Some people like that roller-coaster thrill-ride feel,” says Whitehead, the chief flight instructor at Burke Lakefront Airport’s T&G Flying Club. “Some are a little bit apprehensive about it, some are comfortable with it.” The one-hour lessons, taught at…
Money Where Your Mouth Is
Band: The Set-Ups (www.thesetups.com) Hometown: Akron Sounds like: “We’re a horn-driven ensemble, blending rock and ska into a polished live show sure to entertain.” Fun fact: “The bass player, Anders [Eskesen], is co-founder of the Rubber City Clothing Company, makers of Akron-themed T-shirts.” Playing: Thursday, November 17, at the Lime Spider, Akron Why you should…
The Fiery Furnaces
In just three years, the Fiery Furnaces have mastered the fine art of Ritalin rock, with three albums of genre-as-buffet music that offer weirdness without sacrificing intellect. The only thing that outpaces the songwriting and musical skills of siblings Matthew and Eleanor Friedberg is their impatience to get to something new. With Rehearsing My Choir,…
Picking Up the Pieces
FRI 11/18 We struggle with puzzles. All those little interlocking pieces drive us mad. Mad! Imagine the anxiety attack the Shmuzzle Puzzle — which features hundreds of identical lizard-shaped pieces — triggers. The puzzles recently hit local shops, and the man responsible for them — Sam Savage — comes to town on Friday to talk…
Last Word
“Time Traveler’s Records in Cuyahoga Falls. They have just about anything.” — Laura S., Akron “In Lake County, Ultrasound’s the place to go: They can order whatever you want — and who else has an entire section dedicated to stoner rock?” — Alex K., Mentor “The Orange Street in Akron. It’s not a record store,…
Bobby Bare
To think that the music industry had a potential super-genre to milk and didn’t jump all over it. The suits who oversaturated our ears with boy bands, rap-rock, and grunge had an opportunity with revitalized country singers after Johnny Cash’s successful American series, but it’s probably better that they didn’t; after all, Kenny Rogers never…
Good Ol’ Boy
FRI 11/18 Junior Brown spent time earlier this year in the recording studio, adding his rich baritone to the summer flick The Dukes of Hazzard. The twangy singer-songwriter serves as the movie’s narrator, even though he’s never seen onscreen. Moreover, he didn’t get to spend much time with Hazzard star Johnny Knoxville. So, there was…
The Filth and the Fury
“Fuck all the bullshit, everybody,” the bespectacled singer of Pittsburgh’s Radio Beats barked last Thursday at the Beachland Tavern. “We don’t care about being talented.” Then he hurled a beer at the crowd and was promptly pelted with half a dozen crumpled Pabst cans. Oh yeah, this was gonna get messy. Welcome to Horriblefest, three…
Psych Ward
Psych Ward is out to get your goat — and then hump it. If you’re offended by bestiality, gratuitous reefer references, and skits mocking retarded folks, this rap-and-roll trio has some advice for you: “Learn to take a joke/Your parents did/Even though they spent the first year wishin’ for SIDS.” And so goes the band’s…
A Very Long Run
Born to Run: 30th Anniversary 3-Disc Set (Columbia Home Video) The centerpiece of this three-disc boxed set isn’t the classic 1975 album, but the two DVDs that come with it. On one, shot in London in 1975, Bruce and the band tear through most of Born to Run and its two predecessors, and it’s a…
Fire Flies
The part with the dragon is really cool. Might as well cut to the chase, right? It’s not as though you need anybody to tell you the basic premise of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire; if you somehow missed the last three, this won’t likely be the one to break your pattern. So…
Room With a View
Cleveland’s newest nightspot wasn’t even open on a recent weeknight, and pedestrians on Prospect Avenue were already stopping to stare. And they still haven’t seen anything yet. View Ultralounge and Nightclub (618 Prospect Avenue) has raised the bar for upscale night life in the city, combining the most visually striking elements of clubs found in…
This Is Exploding
This Is Exploding really does sound like it’s about to explode. Now three years old, the Cleveland quartet is a rare example of an indie rock band that has a string of obvious influences, but ultimately transcends them all. And so while this bunch may borrow a page from Fugazi, with singer-guitarist Joshua Jesty warbling…
A Lost Soul
Putting together a sequel to a hit videogame is tricky business. Play it safe and give people more of the same, and it ends up feeling stale. But try to innovate too much, and you dilute what made the game great to begin with. Soul Calibur III somehow manages to make both mistakes. The sequel…
Last Laugh
The political right often contends that Hollywood hasn’t made any movies dealing with the war on terror. This probably results less from political bias than financial bottom line — the only two recent mainstream movies to touch on the theme of America vs. terrorists were Stealth and Team America, and neither made big bucks. Foreign…
Eliot Lipp
Fundamentalism in music, as in religion, can be repulsive. Eliot Lipp is a funk fundamentalist, but this true believer translates his staunch good-foot tenets into tracks that burst with a vibrant life force that’s anything but conservative. The 12 tracks on his 2004 debut album, Eliot Lipp (on Scott “Prefuse 73” Herren’s Eastern Developments label),…
Our top DVD picks for the week of November 15
The Beat That My Heart Skipped (Wellspring) The Ed Sullivan Show Rock & Roll Classics Boxed Set (Sofa Entertainment) Fantasy Island: The Complete First Season (Columbia/Tristar) Friends: The Complete Tenth Season (Warner Bros.) Friends: Collector’s Box (Warner Bros.) Greg Behrendt Is Uncool (WEA) Guided by Voices: The Electrifying Conclusion (Plexifilm) The Harold Lloyd Comedy Collection…
Hello, He’s Not Johnny Cash
In Walk the Line, co-writer and director James Mangold offers a dryly literal and obvious interpretation of the Johnny Cash story, already recounted in two autobiographies and myriad other books and boxed-set histories; the filmmaker all but gives us the day-to-day blow-by-blows of Cash’s early years, from rising Sun to falling star almost done in…
Deborah Coleman
Vainglorious mythology tells us that in order to play the blues, one must live the blues. Blues players originate from oppressive American environs, like the segregated South or the urban, industrial Midwest. There are, of course, other clichés, but Deborah Coleman negates most of them. Born 1956 in Portsmouth, Virginia, Coleman was moved to play…
Naked Before God
Sipping cranberry juice and Malibu at 4:30 in the afternoon, Mama and Peaches slump on purple suede chairs at Just Teazin, a strip club in Painesville. They look worn out, ready to replace their six-inch heels with a pair of fuzzy slippers. The two glance sullenly around the dark, cavernous bar. It’s mostly empty, save…
Double Cross-Dresser
The holy grail of most run-of-the-mill male cross-dressers (as opposed to flamboyantly theatrical drag queens) is the ability to “pass,” to be viewed by the world as just another member of the feminine gender. Very often, this requires a substantial amount of cosmetic expertise and behavioral fine-tuning to erase or camouflage inherent masculine characteristics, so…
Modey Lemon
Constantly dogged by the plague of two-piece raw blues that spread a couple of years ago, Pittsburgh’s Modey Lemon has since ingested a bass player and perhaps some other remedies, turning into a swaying psychedelic beast in step with its label’s impressive punk-psych roster. On Modey Lemon’s latest, The Curious City (Birdman), the band’s kitchen-sink…
Up in Smoke
The best and brightest of the Summit County Democratic Party are packed into the bar like marinated sardines, wholly unaware of the empty chairs in the adjacent nonsmoking room. It’s election night at Crave, a downtown Akron restaurant, and it’s one hell of a celebration. There may be music playing, but you can’t hear it…
Green & Mean
What with humankind’s abuse of the vegetable world over recent decades — clear-cutting forests, chemically strangling our front yards, etc. — it’s a wonder that plants haven’t already attacked us in our sleep. After all, we tend to measure our progress as a civilization by the number of native botanical organisms we manage to plow…
Matisyahu
Anyone who’s been subjected to Baha’i ska or Krishna punk can tell you that Christianity is not the problem with Christian rock — it’s the manipulation of secular music with religion. Reggae, on the other hand, is religious music in the first place, with a distinctly Judaic root. No surprise, then, that Matisyahu, Brooklyn’s Hassidic…
Broken Bone
It’s a bit past midnight, time to praise the Lord and pass the Moët. “Don’t Jesus make you feel good?” Bizzy sings between sips of champagne, celebrating the Sabbath with a pair of drunken chicks who’ve wandered onstage. The girls roll their hips at the crowd as the sermon continues, their wobbly legs gelatinized by…
Capsule reviews of current area theater presentations.
Cleveland Cabaret Project — One little way to measure an urban community’s sophistication is in the vitality of its cabaret performances. So it’s heartening to note that producer Lora Workman is trying to resuscitate this lovely art form here with the Cleveland Cabaret Project, a series of presentations by local singers that runs concurrently with…
Asylum Street Spankers
Mercurial, the most recent studio platter from these unamplified Austin roots-music revivalists, is a cover record and a good one, thanks to a couple of unexpected twists. Amid the sort of mid-20th-century blues, R&B, and swing fare you associate with the Spankers — Bessie Smith, Ivory Joe Hunter, the Boswell Sisters, and the like –…
Gay Tuesday
In 2004, George W. Bush used anti-gay marriage initiatives to win reelection in Ohio and elsewhere. But a scant year later, openly gay politicians cleaned up at the ballot box. Call it The Year of the Homo. In Cuyahoga County, three queer candidates were elected last week, the first time any openly gay politician has…
Capsule reviews of current area art exhibitions.
NEW Floating World — Cleveland native Gary Bukovnik takes floral still lifes as close as possible to the cutting edge in this invigorating show of large-scale watercolors. Flowers, vases, water — all disobey natural forces here, soaring freely as if dropped or thrown into view from someplace just beyond the paper’s edge. The resulting sense…
The Esoteric
An unnerving number of albums released in recent years have featured near-identical blends of headbanging riffs, fancy double-bass drum work, and lightning-fingered guitar solos. But it would be wrong to suggest that metalcore has become a total aesthetic dead end. It’s always possible that some band will revitalize the genre. It’s just not likely to…
The Kong Show
TV/DVD — King Kong: Just in time for Peter Jackson’s big-budget remake about the ginormous gorilla comes a pair of projects that shed light on the original 1933 classic. I’m King Kong! The Exploits of Merian C. Cooper (airing at 8 p.m. Tuesday on Turner Classic Movies) chronicles the history of the adventurer/movie producer who…
Stumbles in the Falls
Tim Ogan sounds crestfallen. The chef-owner of the new Falls Grille has just learned that the flubbed Scotch egg salad that was sent back to his kitchen on an earlier weeknight had come from our table. While the concept has potential — hard-boiled quail eggs wrapped in sage-seasoned sausage, frozen until needed, then fried to…
Tom Jones
Before Jon Landau famously proclaimed that he’d seen the future of rock and roll, and his name was Bruce Springsteen, the onetime Rolling Stone contributor saw no future in another rhythmically challenged, ham-fisted lady-killer. “Tom Jones will burn himself out because his ratio is wrong — 25 percent art, 75 percent artifice,” wrote Landau in…
There Oughta Be a Law
The Eastlake Stadium curse strikes again: When public officials stonewall, as they did when Scene inquired about the transit facility at the Eastlake stadium, you can be sure they have something to hide [First Punch, November 2]. We need a law that results in the termination of any public official who fails to answer a…
No-Fuss Feasting
If the paucity of restaurants open on Thanksgiving Day is any measure, Clevelanders still prefer to spend their holiday eating off card tables in Aunt Gertie’s rec room. Too bad for them. For the rest of us, who are just as happy to let someone else cook, clean, and empty Gertie’s ashtrays, there are options.…
The Black Diamonds
You’ve heard the blues, and you’ve heard modern, rockin’ takes on the blues with a host of esoteric influences. But have you ever heard dirty, blues-based rock featuring a bagpipe? Well, we haven’t, so the Black Diamonds’ “Wentelteefjes” (that’s Dutch for bread with cinnamon) is just one reason that you should spend Thanksgiving Eve with…
Does Not Compute
Playwright Eric Coble is an armchair politician with a twisted sense of humor. So it’s only fitting that his latest play, T.I.D.Y., would put a no-nonsense computer programmer in the middle of a slapstick plot about world domination in — of all places — Cleveland. “I love the idea of the ultimate global conspiracy starting…
Be Your Own Joey Ramone
Ah, November: that glorious month when thousands of people frantically write novels they will never permit anyone to read. Now, let’s all craft solo albums the world will never hear. NaNoWriMo — aka National Novel Writing Month — dawns once again. This is the now-international phenomenon that challenges ordinary citizens to pen an original 50,000-word…
The Difficult
This Thanksgiving Eve, two of Akron’s more acclaimed indie-rock outfits are joined by Rubber City rockers from yesteryear. The Difficult (formerly known as “the Diffi-cult,” but rock and roll and punctuation don’t mix) made its mark from 1983 to 1992, then relapsed this April, and is playing an ongoing series of reunion shows. “I was…
This Week’s Day-By-Day Picks
Thursday, November 17 Today’s Local Author Book Fair features works by area scribes who write about all kinds of things: art, poetry, music, self-help, and fantasy. Henry Adams (Eakins Revealed: The Secret Life of an American Artist), Thomas Sayers Ellis (The Maverick Room), and Nicole Hunter (Waiting for the World to End) are among the…
Burning the Faithful
The increasingly combative File-Sharing Wars have come to this: Record companies now assume that you may have criminal intent, whether you buy CDs honestly or not. Recent releases from the Foo Fighters, My Morning Jacket, Velvet Revolver, and the Backstreet Boys have placed new, unexpected limitations on your ability to rip, store, copy, and burn…
Madonna
On Confessions on a Dance Floor, Madonna makes progress in returning to form after the preachy, pale American Life, but this seamless, beat-filled ode to dance clubs isn’t enough to restore her pop relevance. These are the sounds of 1998, halfway between the Chemical Brothers and Stardust, and on “Sorry,” Madonna explains why this stuff…
