Look, Up in the Sky!
It may look like Greg Poe has lost control of his plane at this weekend’s Cleveland National Air Show, but it’s no big deal, the pilot says. That’s just Newton’s Folly, a trick that involves continuously rolling the plane at 265 miles per hour. “If you look over your shoulder, it looks like the earth…
Fuzion
Cleveland quintet Fuzion has crossover appeal written all over it, rocking just hard enough for active rock radio and sounding nonthreatening enough for adult-contemporary formats. It often sounds like a band hellbent on melding Coldplay with A Perfect Circle. The demo’s three tracks feature basic rock structures topped with grand atmospherics in the form of…
Cash Blind
Back when Johnny Cash rode his first peak of popularity, he took advantage of his bad-boy image, pandering to mouth-breathers who equate black outfits with individuality and rebellion. In the mid-’90s, with Cash’s career at its lowest ebb, Rick Rubin seized upon this idea. He repackaged the man in black as an iconic antihero speaking…
New York Dolls
File this under “better than expected.” Thirty-two years have passed since the New York Dolls’ second album, Too Much Too Soon. In that time, the group has seen the demise of three of its five original members, including the sad passing of bassist Arthur “Killer” Kane after he, David Johansen, and Sylvain Sylvain reunited live…
Just the Ticket
An 1899 Pub patron will pocket a pair of Indians passes at tonight’s Tribe Ticket Giveaway. During Monday and Tuesday raffles, the bar gives away tickets that have been donated by pub owner Mark Danforth, who’s also a season-ticket holder. Up for grabs are ducats to games against Kansas City on September 12 and 13,…
Eastern Philosophy
Comedian Robert Hawkins swears that he goes over better with audiences in the eastern part of the country. “People there get my sarcasm,” he says. “Because they invented it.” Even the homeless people there mock you, he says. “This guy goes, ‘Do you have any change?’ I said no. ‘Do you have any cigarettes?’ No.…
Bizzy Bone
Which camp has released the most product over the past dozen years, the Wu-Tang Clan or Bone Thugs-N-Harmony? The smart money’s on the Wu crew, but this is already Bizzy Bone’s third album of 2006 and sounds it. Producer Playalitical sets nearly every track to the stuttering, double-time rhythm the Thugs made famous, and aside…
Poster Boy
Looking into a record shop window can be a disorienting experience, what with all the concert posters staring back at you like punk-rock carnival barkers pleading for your attention. Those graphics, often first encounters with a local musician, communicate something about the act — or at least seek your attention long enough for you to…
Lamb of God
Two albums ago, Lamb of God was great. Now it’s merely very, very good. Sacrament is both a holding pattern and a retreat: The riffs on this disc could have come straight off 2004’s Ashes of the Wake. That’s not exactly a bad thing, of course. Mark Morton and Will Adler have composed some of…
Smooth Sax
Think of New York saxophonist Najee’s headlining gig at tonight’s Smooth Jazz Holiday as a sort of homecoming. After dismal sales of his 2003 CD, Embrace, he parted ways with his former record company, Warlock, and inked a deal with tiny Heads Up, which is under the umbrella of Cleveland’s Telarc. “Due to label circumstances,…
Night Shift
During office hours, Jeanette Potts is a joke-cracking urologist at the Cleveland Clinic. But after work today, she peels off her scrubs to become Dr. Tango for the weekly Street Beats performance series. “It’ll be like a piece of art on the sidewalk,” says Potts. “It’s like bringing a little bit of Argentina to Cleveland.”…
If These Trees Could Talk
Like the Six Parts Seven, another area group known for its rock soundscapes, Akron’s If These Trees Could Talk proves in its self-titled six-song debut that you don’t need vocals to ooze emotion. In fact, lyrics would only get in the way of the Trees’ dense, flowing sound. This album emotes like Explosions in the…
Desert Isle Discs
J.P. Hamm, singer-guitarist for J.P. & the Chatfield Boys, names his top 5. 1. Billy Cobham, Spectrum I’m a drummer at heart, so this record opened my mind to the cosmic rhythms of jazz fusion. It inspired me toward directions I had never imagined. 2. Martin Sexton, In the Journey It was actually the first…
Get Busy
Sean Paul has done more to bring reggae music into the mainstream than anyone since Bob Marley. “Baby Boy,” his 2003 duet with Beyoncé, pretty much introduced pop radio to the ubiquitous dancehall/diva combo. Paul’s latest album, The Trinity, generated a No. 1 hit with “Temperature,” a toasty booty call. Thu., Aug. 31, 8 p.m.
Like a Rolling Stone
Even though he’s penned the monumental Song & Dance Man III: The Art of Bob Dylan and the recent Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, British author Michael Gray claims he’s not one of those rabid fans who roots through the singer-songwriter’s garbage for a memento. “I have a life,” he says. “I don’t know the [catalog] numbers…
Dead Even/Dissonant
Pissed about personality-morphing poseurs, Dead Even singer Jedediah “JC” Koszewski breathes fire, creating the urgent impression that nobody involved will live through the song. Over metalcore chug riffs and straight-up metal guitar solos, Dead Even — voted best metal band in town by Scene readers two years running — turns gang vocals into small-army vocals,…
Urban Cowboys
The musical marauders of Lawless have been working saloons from Kent to Cleveland for three years, refining their country-rock concoctions. Two weeks ago, the quartet holed up in the Willoughby Brewing Company for a Sunday night of drinking and line-dancing, soaking the brewery’s floorboards with even coats of country, rock, and pop. Sporting a black…
Hippie Night in the Falls
Stand-up comic Melanie Maloy is often mistaken for a stoner. She thinks it might have something to do with her dreadlocks. “But that’s just a coincidence,” she jokes. Kidding aside, Maloy — a young vegetarian hippie — has a stage persona that drifts somewhere between a Ritalin-deprived kid and a pot-addled twentysomething. After graduating from…
Bird Brains
Convergence-Continuum’s latest production, A Murder of Crows, is billed as a “psycho-apocalyptic comedy.” In Mac Wellman’s play, the action takes place on the porch of a home in the Midwest, where a young girl has moved in with her aunt and uncle after the death of her father. Predicting an imminent weather catastrophe, she tries…
Burn to Shine 3: Portland, OR (Trixie)
Burn to Shine’s formula is straightforward: Gather top bands from one city in a house scheduled for demolition, then film each playing a new song. No fans, no stages — just unadorned live performances filmed with unfettered access on high-definition video cameras. The brainchild of Fugazi drummer Brendan Canty, the first episode was meant to…
Rock On
Kalie Kaminski first made the papers 15 years ago. She was an infant at the time, but she was already famous. Only a couple weeks old, she was the youngest recipient of a heart transplant in Ohio history. When Kalie was born, the left side of her heart was malformed, due to a disease known…
War – What Is It Good For?
Ensemble Theatre opens its 27th season tonight with the world premiere of Let Freedom Ring! , a musical revue that doubles as social satire. “We’re living in a time where we all need to hear messages that help get us off our asses and do something to help this country change direction,” says co-writer (and…
Nerves of Steel
Steely Dan’s Walter Becker and Donald Fagen recently posted a letter on their website in which they took some jabs at Owen Wilson. They called the actor out for pilfering their song “Cousin Dupree” (about an annoying slacker who shacks up on a relative’s couch) for his latest movie, You, Me and Dupree (about an…
Playing Ketchup
We don’t eat burgers often — our artery-clogger of choice is a juicy rib steak, thank you — but we do have strong opinions about what makes for a good ‘un. No matter how they’re cooked, the best burgers are thick, juicy but not greasy, full of big, smoky flavors — and are all about…
Bone’s Back
Cleveland hip-hop icons Bone Thugs-N-Harmony are ready to return with their first albums made under the group name since 2002. Due September 19, Thug Stories sees the Grammy winners reunite with Koch Records GM Alan Grunblatt, who coordinated the marketing and promotion for Bone’s multiplatinum albums Creepin On Ah Come Up and E. 1999 Eternal.…
Oz Remixed
Nothing beats Dorothy singing “Over the Rainbow” with a live orchestral accompaniment. Tonight, the Blossom Festival Orchestra performs the famous score of The Wizard of Oz while the 1939 movie plays on the big screen. “You have such a small margin for error,” says conductor Constantine Kitsopoulos, who makes his Cleveland debut tonight. “The film…
Beacon Massacre
On an August day, Dave Wilson was standing in his kitchen, preparing himself for the end, when his wife nodded to his Knight Ridder coffee mug. “You don’t want to drink from that,” she said. I sure as hell don’t, Wilson thought. He’d given 18 years to that damn company, a decade of which he’d…
Come Together
The go-go dancers start at 10:45, our black-garbed server tells us as he motions toward the tiny platforms in front of Sinergy’s soaring windows. Now, though, it’s only 8:30 p.m., and we’ll just have to settle for the light show. This turns out not to be a bad thing. A moment later, we are watching…
An Albatross
For real, man, An Albatross is not a gimmick. No, really. Sure, its Philadelphia electro-spazz artists may come at you with serious vibes, man, with peace-and-love unity. They may speak in a ’60s lingo completely foreign to untrained (read: un-Timothy-Learyized) ears. And they may or may not spend some time debating the effects of psychoactive…
Weird Movie Time!
You probably won’t see a more bleak and disturbing portrait of Russia than the one that unspools in 4. The film — which pissed off the country’s censors, who lobbied unsuccessfully to have a third of the movie cut — begins in Moscow, where three strangers meet in a bar late at night. They share…
Paging Vindication
For Dr. Thomas Kirby, justice has finally arrived, in the form of a $14 million payout, though he won’t see a penny. It’s just a sliver of justice — nothing that will help him repair his life, which was long ago hacked by the scalpel of hospital politics. But he’ll take it. “It’s a vindication,”…
Trick or Treat
If, at this remove, we can imagine Vienna in the late 1890s, we behold a great imperial capital in ferment. Gustav Mahler is not only reinventing the harmonic structure of serious music, he is getting his head seriously shrunk by Sigmund Freud. Arnold Schoenberg takes painting lessons from the eroticist Richard Gerstl (who will later…
The Clientele
Pick any adjective commonly associated with gentle British pop — from fragile to fey, winsome to wimpy — and it’s doubtful that you’ll find a better use for it than to describe the music of the Clientele. With guitars shimmering like raindrops on leaves, cardboard-box drumming, and the refined murmur of Alasdair MacLean, the London…
Banana Republic
Remember when Woody Allen used to be funny? Anyone who has never seen Allen’s pre-Soon Yi movies should check out Bananas. Tonight, Lakewood Public Library shows the 1971 comedy classic about a nebbishy product tester (played by the director, natch) who inadvertently becomes a South American guerrilla. As with all of Allen’s films, there’s a…
Blame One, Blame All
To each his own lawsuit: By your reasoning, anyone anywhere should be held responsible, even after decades, for the costs of fixing anything, if the product is eventually banned as dangerous [“The Poison Kids,” August 16]. Even if the product and process were completely legal when it happened. None of these companies did anything illegal,…
Crows Feat
One of the tiny treasures of the English language is that, somewhere along our idiomatic pathway, we started giving groups of animals surprisingly appropriate identifying phrases. Thus, we have the familiar pride of lions, along with the lesser-known but equally delightful bloat of hippos and shrewdness of apes. Playwright Mac Wellman chose one of these…
Maia Sharp
Sophisticated yet understated, Maia Sharp’s songs hark back to the ’70s, when pop music was made by adults. Like Aimee Mann crossed with Sheryl Crow, Sharp combines a rootsy, acoustic guitar-driven approach with arrangements that stop just short of baroque pop. Sharp has an earthy quality that blends nicely with the smoky, urbane atmospheres of…
A Fair Beyond Compare
The Great Geauga County Fair kicks off its 184th outing today. It’s Ohio’s oldest fair. It’s also one of the largest, featuring rides, games, and tons of food. There’s also horse races, demolition derbies, and tractor pulls. Plus, celebrate Labor Day with bull-riding — all day long. Aug. 31-Sept. 4, 8 a.m.-noon
Pervert Jihad
Having grown weary of beating up on homos, Ohio’s favorite conservatives are turning to one of the final frontiers of depravity: pay-per-view porn in hotels. Citizens for Community Values, the Cincinnati group with a really weird sexual obsession, is launching a jihad to make Quick n’ Nasty — volumes one through seven — unavailable to…
The Breakups
By the time Trust the Man opens this weekend, it will have been nearly a year since it debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival, where it was picked up for distribution by Fox Searchlight. Forget that it’s a year old; this thing tastes a good decade past its expiration date. Bart Freundlich (The Myth…
Relapse Contamination Tour
When you put “shit” or “fuck” right in your band’s name, you’re officially going after a certain demographic and nobody else. New Orleans sludge pusher Facedowninshit is not looking to get on TRL — or even Headbanger’s Ball, for that matter. It’s after the folks who wish Eyehategod toured more. Unearthly Trance works a similar…
Roll Out the Barrels
We can’t think of a better way to celebrate the holiday weekend than with a Labor Day Oktoberfest. Berea’s annual bash features everything we love about Germany, including beer, bratwurst, and lederhosen. Bands and dance troupes perform while visitors watch a sculptor construct a 20-foot sand castle. Even Fido gets in on the action, with…
Anatomy of a Dumb Law
Not to get too Dick Feagler here, but there used to be some things you could flat-out count on. Like, say, bad food at The Jake. Thieving public officials. And a free lawyer, if you couldn’t afford one. But now, thanks to those thieves (some things never change), you can count on something else. That…
Capsule reviews of current area theater presentations.
The Buddy Holly Story — Almost comical in appearance, but possessing a fierce commitment to his distinctive sound, Buddy Holly was a primal force on the rock-and-roll scene of the late 1950s, and this Carousel show manages to harness his magic. Director Victoria Bussert coaxes small but telling moments from the flimsy book written by…
Little Richard
He’s “the architect, the innovator” of rock and roll — or so he tells everyone, as he did at the ’93 Grammys, accepting his Lifetime Achievement Award. If Macon, Georgia-born Richard Wayne Penniman isn’t, who is? His little-heard 1951-1953 recordings were superb R&B. And during rock’s infancy, he shocked the world with his 1955 hit…
Airforce Shun
Today’s Cleveland Peace Show is billed as the “anti-Air Show,” and features drums, dance, and songs instead of the heavy artillery featured at that other show. “We believe weapons of mass destruction should not be used for family entertainment,” says festival organizer Tim Smith. Featured bands include Mifune, the Jimiller Band, and Woodshed Mercy. Mon.,…
“What an idiot, and what a rag of a publication.”
Your publication has Madison and its surrounding communities up in arms about the bush league article “Up in Smoke” [August 9]. So what do you do? Offer as a rebuttal a letter written by Tina Miller, putting down the good people of Madison even more. Don’t bother putting your paper in the usual places in…
Capsule reviews of current area art exhibitions.
NEW Darice Polo — These images by Clevelander Darice Polo look so much like old black-and-white family photos that it’s hard to believe they’re actually recent works. Only upon close inspection — nose against the glass — is their true magnificence revealed. They’re actually drawings — film stills transformed with painstaking care into pencil-and-paper (or…
Cleveland Metal Festival
The 2006 edition of the Peabody’s annual Cleveland Metal Fest is bigger, nastier, and cheaper. Three-day passes are a mere $12 and include Sunday night’s Relapse Records Contamination tour, which will run concurrent with a regional showcase featuring Michigan death-metal-grindcore CHUDs Saprogenic, Cleveland underground sensation Schnauzer, and the local rip-grind-tear-repeat outfit Phronesis. Saturday’s locked-and-loaded bill…
Coolest Print Shop Ever
The employees of Jakprints show their skills at today’s Jak of All Trades Show. And it’s not just the print shop’s paintings, photos, and clothing they’re displaying. They’re also plugging in with their bands (like Above This Fire and Candy Cigarettes) and hitting the ramps on their skateboards (apparently, many of Jak’s crew love to…
The Birdman Has Landed
Newsflash: “Late-’70s Australian punk legend Radio Birdman is touring America.” Just another reunion tour? Think again. This is a noteworthy event. Birdman is (along with the Saints) the Australian analog of the Sex Pistols or Ramones, having inspired hundreds of reverent bands. But that’s not the reason. Nor is it because Birdman’s ’77 LP Radios…
The Short Goodbye
Arrested Development: Season Three (Fox) The final collection of Arrested Development discs feels sadly incomplete: only 13 episodes this time, the result of Fox’s inability to attract viewers to one of TV’s greatest comedies and the network’s unwillingness to give it a full farewell. But none of that diminishes the quality of the show about…
Shellac
Live sightings of the members of Chicago’s Shellac — guitarist Steve Albini, bassist Bob Weston, drummer Todd Trainer — are about as common as for Tom Waits. And Shellac’s tour itinerary roughly mirrors Waits’ recent U.S. trek through the South en route to the Midwest. Expect a pummeling mélange of Fugazi-like syncopation, seismic low end,…
Skewed News
Former disc jockey Jack Mayberry has been performing stand-up comedy for more than 20 years. Because of his broadcasting background, the L.A.-based Mayberry considers himself a news junkie. But he doesn’t take sides. “I vote against people, I don’t vote for them,” he says. “When I was trying to decide between Kerry and Bush, it…
Extended Family
Call the Family Values Tour a nü-metal showcase if you must — we’d certainly understand. But remember: When Korn, Slipknot, and the Deftones spawned the genre, “nü metal” wasn’t a punch line. It has since become the most critically maligned movement since hair metal, though its dreadlocked, drop-tuned giants are proving they have twice the…
Our top DVD picks for the week of August 29.
Akeelah and the Bee (Lions Gate) American Gun (IFC) The Castle of Cagliostro (Manga) Desperate Housewives: Season Two (Buena Vista) Stephen King’s Desperation (Lions Gate) Friends With Money (Sony) Iron Island (Kino) Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (Paramount) Lonesome Jim (IFC) Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World (Warner Bros.) Mountain Patrol: Kekelixi (Sony) Nip/Tuck:…
Rancid
The Beatles ripped off Chuck Berry, and Zeppelin lifted riffs from Willie Dixon, so can we get over Rancid’s similarities to the Clash? The comparison has detracted from Rancid’s own fine legacy, leaving it even more underrated than its sales figures would suggest. The band members have an undeniable gift for anthemic melodies, as heard…
Killin’ Time
Killin’ Time L.A. new wavers stop the clock at 1983. Rock Kills Kid frontman Jeff Tucker would like more me-time. Ever since Are You Nervous? , his band’s debut album, came out earlier this year, he’s been so busy touring — including a stop at Taste of Cleveland today — that he hasn’t had time…
Sasha Dobson
Free of the angst so common among indie artists today, Sasha Dobson’s aptly titled Modern Romance is an atmospheric, love-themed marriage of jazz and Americana. With Norah Jones co-conspirators Jesse Harris and Richard Julian, Dobson has created a sound equally suggestive of Joni Mitchell and Astrud Gilberto. Unlike Miss Jones, however, Dobson threads fewer pop…
Road Rage
Have you ever looked into onrushing traffic and imagined how much damage you would cause with a simple crank of the steering wheel? If so, FlatOut 2 is the racing game for you. The latest entry in a genre best described as Evel Knievel meets NASCAR, FlatOut 2 lets you vent vehicular aggression without dying…
Ana Popovic
Born in Yugoslavia and currently hailing from Amsterdam, Ana Popovic plays guitar like she was raised in New Orleans, peppering her band’s mainstream blues with electric funk, acoustic slide, jazz instrumentals, and hot rock.
Grillin’ and Chillin’
Leave your potty mouth and gangsta rap at home if you plan to attend today’s Bisbee Connection Cook-Out. The fifth annual barbecue for Cleveland’s inner-city kids is all about clean living, says organizer Joseph Moore. “No negativity, no gangs,” he says. “And don’t bring no liquor, because we ain’t gonna allow that.” As the grills…
The Tyde
The Tyde’s third record bounces like a beach ball from song to song, between Brit-flavored power pop and paisley SoCal country rock, distilling the band’s transatlantic musical obsessions into 11 cuts of sun-soaked bliss. Singer-songwriter Darren Rademaker sands down the last psychedelic remnants of his old Beachwood Sparks project, turning up the volume on the…
The week’s best releases from the pop-culture universe.
DVD — ³The Simpsons,² The Complete Eighth Season: Tons of deleted scenes highlight this four-disc set of all 25 episodes from the terrific 1997-98 season. It includes such beloved episodes as “The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show” (featuring Homer as an “extreme” cartoon dog) and “Homer’s Phobia,” in which Homer worries about guest star…
Jamie Kennedy
You may recall Jamie Kennedy from the first Scream flick, in which he played one of the — oh, heck, if you still haven’t seen it, we don’t want to spoil it for you. More likely you know him as hapless wannabe rapper B-Rad in the comedy film Malibu’s Most Wanted, which he starred in…
