Chaps Optional
When the Mr. Cleveland Leather Contest Weekend wraps up Sunday, last year’s winner will relinquish his title to a new champ. The competitors know the drill: Pose in leather, flex some muscle, and wait for a panel of Cleveland’s leading leathermen to hang the first-place medal around the victor’s neck. Till then, there are loads…
Ghost World
Armed with only a case of Budweiser, some spliffs, a few Air Wick candles for “ambiance,” and a passing knowledge of how to contact the spirit world gleaned from Ghost and Witchboard, four friends and I joined hands around my dining-room table as the clock approached midnight. “Shabooh, shoobah, shamma lamma ding dong . .…
Kataklysm
It’s a mystery why so many great metal bands have emerged from Francophone Canada, but Voivod, Cryptopsy, and Gorguts have heavy-duty competition from Kataklysm. These veterans (this is their ninth studio album since the group formed in 1992) have maintained the same lineup throughout their entire career, and rather than experiment, they’ve explored their particular…
Law and Disorder
Sony’s approach with its handheld, the PlayStation Portable, is to carbon-copy its most popular titles for on-the-go gaming. “Enjoy Grand Theft Auto on PlayStation 2?” Sony seems to ask. “Well, here’s a version for the PSP. Oh, you’re a SOCOM fan? Super, we’ve got that on PSP too.” With the DS, Nintendo has taken a…
Funny Town
“There’s an old saying in our business,” says comic Bobby Collins. “If it works in Jersey and Cleveland, then it works around the country.” With that in mind, the Los Angeles resident will be in town this weekend, testing new material. He’ll discuss celebrities (“Is Star Jones a black Teletubby?”), TV when he was a…
Kill Whitey
Ever since the White Stripes emerged from the Detroit rock underground in 2001, Jack White has been offering a cautionary lesson. Call it: What Not to Do if You’re a Rust-Belt Boy Who Gets Famous. Rule No. 1: Pencil mustaches are for perverts, not rock stars (see Prince). Rule No. 2: “Bloated Michael Jackson” is…
Ne-Yo
It’s ancient history to many of the people who are going to buy this disc, but Def Jam co-founder Russell Simmons hoped early in the label’s history to revitalize R&B with hip-hop rhythms. Twenty years ago, he pulled it off with the forgotten Oran “Juice” Jones classic “The Rain,” and the idea was certainly visionary,…
Our top DVD picks for the week of February 21
Confessions of a Sociopathic Social Climber (MCA) The Dick Cavett Show: Comic Legends (Shout Factory) Domino (New Line) Dorian Blues (TLA) First Descent (Universal) Left of the Dial (HBO) The Memory of a Killer (Sony) Midnight Cowboy: Two-Disc Collector’s Edition (MGM) Monty Python and the Holy Grail: Collector’s Edition (Sony) North Country (Warner Bros.) NYPD…
For the Ladies
No V-Fest (that’s short for vagina) would be complete without a bunch of women talking about upchucking their lunch mere minutes after eating it. The dangers of bulimia and anorexia top the list of lectures at today’s festival centered on women’s health issues. Also on tap: a panel on powerful ladies and discussion groups that…
Doomsday
Rappers MF Doom and MF Grimm are longtime collaborators — and until recently, close friends. Coming up together as part of New York City’s M.I.C. (Monsta Island Czars) crew in the 1990s, Doom was originally known as Zev Love X. But the two went on to share billing on many albums together, as well as…
Various Artists
A tribute album that has two keeper covers and one laudable interpretation is still better than most. When it was first released in 2003, Black on Black: A Tribute to Black Flag barely met that measure, paying tribute to the first band that could fit an album’s worth of fear and loathing into a seven-inch…
The week’s best releases from the pop-culture universe
DVD — Dog Day Afternoon: Two-Disc Special Edition: The first two Godfather movies made Al Pacino a star, but his legend was cemented with this gritty classic, based on a true story, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year. Pacino plays broke, inconspicuous Sonny, who finds himself in the middle of a media circus after…
Beat Smart
New Jersey hip-hop duo Dälek (pronounced “dialect”) drops rhymes on Absence, its fourth album, as if the fate of democracy depends on it. MC Dälek spits lyrics as socially and politically conscious as those of Public Enemy, an obvious influence. But there’s also plenty of room for producer Oktopus to inject bass-heavy beats that creep…
Sound Advice
Before Ben Schigel produced Chimaira and Drowning Pool, he led Switched to a major-label run, selling 175,000 copies of 2002’s Subject to Change. Switched headlines the Odeon’s final show Tuesday, February 28. What have you been listening to lately? Truthfully, I haven’t really been listening to music. I listen to sports-talk radio and jazz (90.3).…
Willie Nile
Willie Nile is a winning populist, whose grasp of street life runs deep and warm. His first album in seven years is a terrific return to form for a bantamweight rocker whose eponymous 1980 debut made him the 87th guy to be heralded as “the new Dylan.” Nile learned those Bob-lessons well, but he’s his…
Blowtorch Singer
Blowtorch Singer A weekday welder croons Billie Holiday on weekends. Kim Reynolds chuckles when she recalls the first time her mother heard her warble a few bars of the sugary ’70s tune “Feelings.” At the age of five, she fumbled most of the words, but nailed the melody. “I swore up and down that I…
Money Where Your Mouth Is
Band: Blue Lunch (www.bluelunch.com) Hometown: Cleveland Sounds like: “1950s jump blues, New Orleans rhythm and blues, and Chicago Blues.” Fun fact: “Once had Mean Gene Okerlund, longtime announcer for the World Wrestling Federation, sing ‘Tutti Frutti’ with the band at the old Barney Google’s in Richfield, while Andre the Giant and his girlfriend were in…
Hate Dies Hard
Hate Dies Hard singer LiLi Roquelin is the kind of girl every traditional-metal guy dreams of. Growing up in France, she was known for her faithful recreation of the Cranberries’ warbling, and she apprenticed in the field of theatrical hard rock by covering bands like Dream Theater. Definitely a keeper. In Hate Dies Hard, the…
Bucks of the Irish
Jerry Callahan lifts his mug to the JFK campaign poster hanging on the wall. It’s Irish Import Night at Sullivan’s, and the steelworker declares his dedication with a Harp-fueled toast. “John F. Kennedy was the best president this country ever had,” he says. “He made us all proud to be Irish.” Every Wednesday, the pub…
Broke Back Mounting
To say Scotty Drennan had a lousy couple of years would be an understatement. Once a rising star of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, the 33-year-old bareback rider with the World’s Toughest Bulls & Broncs Tour has paid a painful price for trying to tame broncos for more than two decades. His neck had to…
Last Word
“I learn about a lot of new music from music blogs — Gorilla vs. Bear, My Old Kentucky Blog, One Louder, and You Ain’t No Picasso. You’ll usually get mp3s from new bands every day, and it’s real people, not critics, writing about the music they love.” — Bill L., IRockCleveland.com “From friends, or by…
Fast Chester
On its self-titled full-length debut, Cleveland-Akron trio Fast Chester hybridizes grunge and ’80s metal. When the band is on, it can lock into a solid groove. When it’s off, the songs sound like the musical love children of WASP and Seven Mary Three. Pop-metal girls will drool over singer-guitarist Angelo Incorvia’s solos, and he occasionally…
Stacked
Somebody call Aunt Jemima! Today’s National Pancake Day, and to celebrate, more than a dozen local teams will participate in the second annual Northeast Ohio National Pancake Day Relays. Sporting aprons and chef hats, four-member teams — including ad hoc squads from Charter One Bank, St. Vincent Charity Hospital, and Cleveland State University — will…
Full Throttle
Osmo Vänskä spends most of his time in Minneapolis, where he’s the music director of the Minnesota Orchestra. Once in a while, he heads back to Finland, where he was born and still occasionally records. He’s conducted orchestras all over the world — from Berlin to London to Cleveland, to which he returns tonight for…
Odeon Out
The Odeon, Cleveland’s signature rock club throughout the ’90s, will close its doors after a final show Tuesday, February 28. After it opened in 1993, the no-frills Flats club was quickly sold to Belkin Productions, long the royal family of Cleveland rock. A casualty of the ongoing turf war between the top two national concert-promotions…
Feel-Good Kind of Place
There is indeed a time and a place for everything, and that includes whipping off your jeans and prancing ’round in your underwear. In this case, the time would be 10 p.m. on the first Thursday of the month, during a regularly scheduled meeting of the Only Undies Club. And the place? Well, that would…
Grandma Rocks!
The Fiery Furnaces made two wildly unpredictable but totally engaging CDs that messed with time, rhyme, and melody (more often than not in the same song). The brother/sister duo of Matt and Eleanor Friedberger weirds out even more on their latest record, Rehearsing My Choir. It’s a concept album about their 83-year-old grandmother. And unlike…
A Mighty Wind
The Wind in the Willows is fuss-free theater for kids. With dozens of things simultaneously swimming in little ones’ heads, the classic Willows, thankfully, keeps its characters, plot, and message simple. Old pals Water Rat, Mole, and Badger meet Mr. Toad and learn a thing or two about diversity. Saturdays, Sundays, 1 & 3 p.m.…
Overkill
Music videos haven’t always been kind to Overkill. Beavis and Butt-head brutalized the New Jersey band’s “Hello From the Gutter” clip, suggesting that the animated skull that soars between scenes should “fly into a video that doesn’t suck.” As the final insult, Beavis imitated singer Bobby Blitz’s pinched falsetto, robbing the cackled closing line “We’ve…
Oral Pleasure
Like bed partners, every burger is different. And fat or lean, thick or thin, in naked glory or pimped out in savory add-ons, every one of them brings a smile to someone’s face. Still, when we crave the kind of pulse-racing, mind-blowing intensity that only the most voluptuous burgers can provide, Foster’s Tavern of Hinckley…
High on the Prog
The last time Norway’s goth-metal prog-rock group Green Carnation played North America, it headlined Canada’s Day of the Equinox music festival. The six members all play several instruments, which served them well on the hour-long song they recorded a few years back. What else can be added to this mix to make Green Carnation even…
We Gotta Have That Funk
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum’s Black History Month programming continues tonight with an appearance by Parliament-Funkadelic bassist Bootsy Collins. The legendary performer — a member of the Hall of Fame — began his career with James Brown, laying down the funky bass riffs to many of the Godfather of Soul’s best-loved…
North Mississippi All Stars
Stripping down the classic ’70s southern-jam model and reaching way back into the blues’ country past, the North Mississippi All Stars are keepers of a flame that has heated up rock since the ballsiest moments of the British Invasion (think raves worthy of early Stones and Yardbirds). Brothers Luther and Cody Dickinson (guitar and drums,…
Scared Stiff
If you have any awareness at all of the existence of Running Scared — no, not the Gregory Hines/Billy Crystal cop-buddy comedy, but the new film written and directed by Wayne Kramer — chances are you have only one question: How in God’s name does anyone expect us to believe that Paul Walker can handle…
Bombs Away
Cocktail in hand, Ellen Poorman stares out the window at the falling snow at Lava Lounge’s weekday Martini Happy Hour. “It’s just so calm and peaceful in here,” she says. “Plus, I can’t find a martini at this price anywhere in town.” The club slaps a $5 happy-hour price on its six specialty martinis, which…
The Black Keys
Akron’s Black Keys are a buzz band that actually exceeds its hype. And the blues-rock duo’s modestly impressive sales — 77,000 copies of 2004’s Rubber Factory LP, and 4,700 of last year’s live DVD — suggest that they’re respected by the right people, but still don’t have too much of a bandwagon. So now that…
Home Invasion
The best thing about Michael Haneke’s Caché (Hidden) is the way it draws on very contemporary fears without ever mentioning them. The War on Terror era has given us all new things to be afraid of; some fear being prey for terrorists, while others fear the government’s response, but both have the effect of making…
The Orchid Relief
The Cleveland Botanical Garden throws a little springtime our way with Orchid Mania: Blossoms & Butterflies, an exhibit, opening today, which features live flowers and insects. The venue’s third annual Orchid Mania show — designed to run as the final dreary months of winter give way to spring — includes sculptures, orchids, and lots and…
Ringworm
It’s only February, but Ringworm’s first headlining Cleveland show since the release of its long-anticipated Justice Replaced by Revenge might be the hardcore show of the year. Riding high on its third album, Ringworm is touring the East Coast and has declared plans to invade Europe, Australia, and New Zealand in upcoming months. The relentless…
He Will Bury You
Tommy Lee Jones’ feature directorial debut is probably much as you’d expect: a blast of nostalgia that nonetheless accepts the realities of modernity, which isn’t surprising, coming from an actor who’s getting up there in years but has found more fame as an old man than as a young’un. The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada…
Save the Dance
Fans have been waiting more than four years for this performance by Garth Fagan Dance at Playhouse Square tonight. The Rochester, New York-based modern dance company was scheduled to perform in 2001. But after September 11, ticket sales plummeted, and the show was canceled. The troupe presents five dances tonight, including the Ohio premiere of…
Golden Years
The mood at Cleveland schools last spring was dire. Buildings were closing. Hundreds of teachers were getting pink slips. Politicians were wringing their hands over another doomed tax levy. It was a familiar refrain: Unless residents ponied up once again, PTA moms would have to sell their kidneys to pay for textbooks. Yet one longtime…
Trick Pony
Though Trick Pony’s members are known as honky-tonk rebels, thanks to a string of drinking hits that started in 2001 with “Pour Me,” its third album, R.I.D.E. , mostly just proves that old clichés never die; they just retire to the country. The album rehashes 30 years of pop, with a cover of Bonnie Tyler’s…
Queasy Pieces
Devotees of bloodthirsty Asian cinema may delight in the unofficial sequel to 2002’s horror sampler Three. Like its predecessor, Three . . . Extremes is a trilogy of short films that root around in the dark regions of the psyche and conclude that human behavior is pretty appalling. Stylistically diverse, but united by their intention…
Short Cuts
Last year, singer-songwriter Shelley Short moved from her hometown of Portland, Oregon, to Chicago. She says she’s not the restless kind, but felt it was time to make a change. “I never lived anywhere else,” she says. “I left on a whim, and all these feelings came out with that.” Fittingly, her new CD, Captain…
The Rewards of Sucking
As the U.S. auto industry struggles, even die-hard unionists are willing to make sacrifices. At bankrupt Delphi, the auto-parts giant that employs thousands in Mahoning County, workers have been asked to take steep cuts in wages, pensions, and health-care benefits. They might be more inclined to sacrifice if their bosses would too. But a bankruptcy…
Kreator
The cover of Kreator’s Live Kreation depicts a solemn ghoul playing the intestines of a bound, disemboweled victim with a bow. Album artwork doesn’t get much more aesthetically appropriate. Dating back more than two decades, this German quartet started out heavier than the burden on Atlas’ shoulders, and last year’s Enemy of God proves that…
Coming Out Party
Spend a few afternoon hours with Comedy Central, and you’ll notice that plenty of the comedians freely traffic in f-bombs and scatological references. This is what they call “working blue,” a phrase that originated around the turn of the 20th century, when vaudeville was in its prime. B.F. Keith and Edward F. Albee (yep, the…
Product Effacement
Commercials really annoy Michael Ivy, and tonight the 25-year-old Cleveland comic will unleash his scorn at the monthly sketch-comedy show Detention. “Why would you pay 100 bucks for a toothbrush?” he asks, referring to one ad he recently saw. “Buy a toothbrush with a computer on it, and you’re an asshole.” Bottled water really pushes…
Lawyers, Guns & Money
In this wooded swatch of north Solon, where the road falls fast and the long, low ranch houses hide among the trees, no one has seen the prosecutor in months. The families on Cannon Road don’t know where their jolly, longtime neighbor is. They just know he’s gone. There used to be poolside barbecues, crowded…
Fifth Annual Suicide Prevention Benefit
Derek Hess’ art is a little dark, but don’t get him wrong: He definitely thinks life is worth living. Hess’ Strhess Clothing is one of the sponsors of Domain Cleveland’s Fifth Annual Suicide Prevention Benefit, which donates the proceeds to the Berea Children’s Home. “Here’s something a therapist once told me about suicide,” says Hess.…
Capsule reviews of current area theater presentations.
Dark Room — The conventional image we have of playwrights and poets is of lonely souls slaving away in a poorly lit basement. Well, you’ve got the location and the illumination right, but everything else about the Dark Room project is much cheerier. Sponsored by the Cleveland Theater Collective, it’s a once-a-month workshop/cabaret for writers…
Sisterly Love
You pretty much know the fate of Frank before even walking into Dobama’s production of The Death of Frank, opening tonight. It’s right there in the title. But other revelations, including an incestuous obsession, should keep audiences riveted. Stephen Belber’s hot-topic play revolves around Peter, a gardener with a hero complex, who harbors a perverse…
Who Said Love Is Blind?
Most folks only get what they’re looking for: I read with both amusement and a touch of sadness the piece by Rebecca Meiser [“Help Wanted,” February 8]. I’m an old guy now, but when young, I was considered to be decent, poor, and really not much to look at. I’m still that way today, and…
Neko Case
Like any self-respecting alt-country artist, Neko Case would probably love to leave behind alt-country — and the negative connotations the term’s overuse has spawned — for good. The well-deep voice that earns deserved comparisons with Patsy Cline has made it difficult for Case to escape the tag, but she was covering Scott Walker as far…
Capsule reviews of current area art exhibitions.
NEW Nervous Bird — No animal species is more skittish than birds, which is why Dott Schneider is able to transform them here so effectively into a mascot for our own paranoia. Schneider paints and draws bird skeletons in various poses and situations, mimicking the way humans behave in today’s war-torn, environmentally plagued climate. Her…
Muy Caliente!
In other parts of the world, Spanish singer Juanes is a huge star. In the U.S., particularly in the Midwest, where Corona qualifies as an exotic beverage, he’s unknown. It might have something to do with the fact that, unlike other Latin singers — such as Shakira and Ricky Martin — Juanes refuses to sing…
Stranger than Fiction
“Do you remember when you were small/And all the people seemed so tall?” — John Lennon, “Remember,” 1970 “Do you remember when you were small/How everybody would seem so tall?” — Spoon, “Me and the Bean,” 2001 “I’m into tension,” says Spoon frontman-mastermind Britt Daniel, in response to a question about the tightly wound energy…
Mardi Gras party
If every day is Mardi Gras at Fat Fish Blue, imagine what the Cajun-themed blues bar’s actual Mardi Gras celebration will be like. This year, the famous all-day blowout kicks off at 11:30 a.m. — that’s a.m. — for a last-man-standing, party-till-you-drop, loud-and-spicy bash full of beads, booze, and boogie tunes. Cats on Holiday get…
Deep Thoughts by Redford
All the President’s Men (Warner Bros.) It’s no mystery why Warner Bros. chose to rerelease All the President’s Men now; at last we know how much — which is to say how little — Mark “Deep Throat” Felt really looked like Hal Holbrook. A new doc on former FBI second-in-command Felt and his long relationship…
