Welcome to a One-Alt-Weekly Town
Here lie two baked-fresh press releases — one from Village Voice Media, Scene’s soon-to-be-former owners, and one from Times-Shamrock, its soon-to-be-new owners. Long story short: Cleveland will soon be a one alt-weekly town. Some number of fine newspaper folks will be out of work sometime soon. And, finally, does anyone know when Little Bar opens?…
Restaurant of the Weekend: Wieners are winners at Buckeye Beer Engine
What’s a summer weekend without a couple cold ones and some juicy hotdogs? But no need to fire up the grill. Lakewood’s Buckeye Beer Engine is standing by, with brews aplenty and some kick-ass dogs, to boot. True, food hasn’t always been a priority at this casual Madison Avenue watering hole. In fact, when brewmaster…
Hello, Cleveland: Petty tops the weekend’s shows
Tom Petty leads the list of the weekend’s shows, but read on, ‘cuz plenty of the best local bands are unleashing new CDs this week. Read on for a full list of everyone playing everywhere, and why you should see them. — D.X. Ferris
Last Night in Cleveland: The Cure
In alt-rock, one thing is certain: you can’t count out that bloke in the Ruby Woo MAC lipstick and frightwig ‘do. Robert Smith has led The Cure – arguably one of the greatest alt-rock acts of all time – over the course of 30 years and a dozen studio albums. His band’s induction into the…
O’Brien Factor: Terrorists should either get color-coordinated or get tortured
We read Kevin O’Brien so you don’t have to … Column: The terrorists get their day in court. Topic: Last week, the Supreme Court ruled that terror suspects will get their day in court. Kevin– steel yourself — doesn’t like the idea. Kevin’s Sanity Level Today: 38 percent What Your Head Would Feel Like if…
Before Dethlok rocks Cleveland, Metalocalypse creator Brendon Small yaps with C-Notes
Dethlok plays House of Blues (308 Euclid Ave.) tonight, with Soilent Green and hometown metal heroes Chimaira. The group started as a joke and became the biggest death metal band in the history of the Billboard album chart. With a simple but esoteric premise, Cartoon Network’s Metalocalypse seemed guaranteed to create a cult hit with…
‘Dunk Giuseppe’ at Brothers Lounge benefit concert
Go behind the scenes with Giuseppe O’Connell at Brothers Lounge at clevescene.com/slideshow/. We get lots of press releases touting events in support of good causes. But we don’t get many as clever as the one sent recently by Giuseppe O’Connell, cantankerous GM at Brothers Lounge, and subject of our recent feature. How’s this for a…
Al Franken heads to Shaker Heights for Senate fundraiser
“What? There’s no direct flight to Shaker Heights? In an election year, celebs who ordinarily couldn’t locate Lake Erie on a map suddenly seem to find our humble swing-state mecca irresistible. A few months ago, Don Cheadle stopped by to support Barack Obama, and even Sean Penn has stopped by, to lend some Hollywood credence…
Mic Check: Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers at Blossom on Sunday
Tom Petty’s coming to town on Sunday. Again. Seems like the dude plays Blossom every single summer. It’s gotten to the point where we’re sorta taking him for granted. Sure, that’s easy to do, especially with recent crappy albums like The Last DJ and Highway Companion. But go back and revisit his Greatest Hits album,…
Slide Show: Death Cab for Cutie at the Plain Dealer Pavilion
Beat it. Death Cab for Cutie played the Plain Dealer Pavilion over the weekend. You may have already read our review. Now you can look at some pictures taken by Wanda Santos-Bray. Check out her slide show. –Michael Gallucci
With help from Supreme Court, Alex Arshinkoff keeps sweaty paws in Summit County politics
It’s a good thing we never participated in one of those celebrity death pools. Although we’re pretty sure British soulstress/black-tar-heroin-fan Amy Winehouse isn’t going to make it through the summer, our track record might suggest otherwise. Take Alex Arshinkoff, for example. The Gayest Straight Guy Ever™ has ruled the Summit County GOP with an iron…
Highland Heights demotes Mark Joseph, the sergeant who yapped about teen suicide attempt
“Hosing your dad’s career is educational and fun!” Something tells us Peter Joseph has been grounded indefinitely. Perhaps even had his driving privileges revoked. The son of Highland Heights sergeant Mark Joseph, Peter gave Dad an early Father’s Day present a few weeks back when he posted on his facebook page that a schoolmate had…
Last Night in Cleveland: Jack Johnson
For a concert that’s as calm as the still waters of an empty pond, you sure don’t expect a crowd to be trembling with excitement. And with Jack Johnson’s reputation as one of the most relaxing acoustic musicians of the decade, you’d certainly anticipate a laid-back live show. But somehow, the most chill dude ever…
Earthquake, Johnny Sanchez leads the week’s big comedy shows
Unless you recognize a comedian’s name as That Girl From that Movie or the Dude from That One HBO Special, it can be hard to tell whether a stand-up is worth seeing. Lucky you: C-Notes did the legwork, and the skinny on this week’s big comedy shows, video included, is just a click away. –…
New chefs take helm at Paladar and Boulevard Blue
One measure of a restaurant’s soundness is how well it can cope with the loss of key team members. The best-run spots have clear contingency plans for such losses, and an in-house talent pool to draw upon. The others? Well, let’s hope you aren’t left holding an unusable gift card. As we reported in last…
Letters published June 18, 2008
“Grand Theft Auto Tremont,” May 28 Tremont Turmoil Does Scene have an anti-Tremont agenda? Why single out Tremont? It was disappointing to see Scene run an article that had no real facts and really just anecdotal evidence. Why didn’t you include stories/stats on the rest of Cleveland’s neighborhoods? And the suburbs? Where is the actual…
Young Knives
Like many of their countrymen, England’s Young Knives play jagged little pop tunes with a wink and a snarl. Their 2006 debut, Voices of Animals and Men, was produced by Gang of Four’s Andy Gill and, not so surprisingly, sounded a lot like a Gang of Four record: Splashes of post-punk mingled with spiky dance-rock.…
Fusion greats Return to Forever make a comeback after nearly three decades
After working with jazz luminaries like Stan Getz, Sarah Vaughan, and Dizzy Gillespie, pianist Chick Corea performed in Miles Davis’ electric bands in the late ’60s and early ’70s. During that time, he played on Davis’ Bitches Brew, a revolutionary work that gave birth to jazz-rock fusion. Davis, who’d already pioneered cool and modal jazz,…
They’ve Got Rhythm
When you catch tonight’s opening of The Wiz in Cleveland Heights, don’t be caught off guard if you suddenly find yourself in the thick of the action as Dorothy, Toto, and gang skip down the yellow-brick road to see the Wizard of Oz. “I love to have the show itself be very interactive with the…
Table 45 dumps the steam-table take on Sunday brunch
As a lifetime member of the “quality over quantity” clan, I don’t get terrifically worked up over Sunday brunch buffets. But I do dig Table 45, executive chef Zack Bruell’s high-concept dining room in the InterContinental Hotel, on the Cleveland Clinic campus. Svelte, sophisticated, and starring a smartly executed menu of global cuisine, the restaurant…
Kill the Fall
Since disbanding the Danzig-indebted hardcore phenom Allergic to Whores in 2004, Ray Terry has led Kill the Fall, a slower power trio that sounds like a killing machine idling on the side of a dirt road, midway between downtown Cleveland and the Hellmouth. And even though Terry has essentially been making the same record for…
Dino-Mite!
The 200-million-year evolution of the prehistoric era’s most famous beasts plays out in animatronic awesomeness for tonight’s opening of Walking With Dinosaurs: The Live Experience. Based on a BBC-TV program, the touring show stars 10 species of computerized dinos that stand as tall as 36 feet and measure 56 feet from nose to tail. “Audiences…
Gay Old Time
As it honors Generations: 20 Years of Pride, Cleveland’s gay community celebrates two decades of homoliciousness this weekend with its annual pride festival.The pre-fest partying starts tonight with a $20 women-only “bleep-tail cruise” on Lake Erie aboard the Goodtime III. Revelers then meet an hour later for the free “P-Word: Pre-Pride Party” at Anatomy, where…
Yuppie Dog Siege: A battle over barking canines in Tremont
Tremont, with its $500,000 condos, $26 duck appetizers, and that famous chef who looks like Mr. Clean, has come a long way since the days when syringes outnumbered squirrels in Lincoln Park. So it should come as no surprise that it’s also home to that benchmark of yuppie frivolity: the doggie bed-and-breakfast. For $32 a…
Quickening
Ten years after quietly cracking the scene’s list of perennial contenders, Quickening comes off like a top-shelf alt-rock band that should have scored a major-label record deal back in ’98. Crisis or Catharsis — the Cleveland trio’s long-overdue fourth record — sounds like a lost Better Than Ezra album, as singer-guitarist James Isom adds layers…
Well Done!
Nothing screams summer louder than the sizzle of a ground-beef patty on the grill. That’s why Dollar Burger Night at Bar Louie in Lyndhurst is getting the Tuesday crowd fired up over its usually priced $8.99 sandwiches. “All you gotta do is purchase any beverage, and the dollar deal is yours,” says Chastity Bogard, the…
Rocky River’s P’Zazz shop dishes out the hot sauce
George Seres, owner of Rocky River’s P’Zazz, has a serious identity problem. How else explain the gregarious shopkeep’s multiple monikers: “Cowboy George,” “The Director of Deliciousness,” and — his current fave — “The Hot-Sauce King of Cleveland”? He’s also been known to appear in public dressed like a giant chile pepper. That was his MO…
Grupo Fantasma
Grupo Fantasma plays smokin’ Latin jazz and funk. Maceo Parker joined in with the horn section on the new Sonidos Gold, and the regular brass backed Prince the last time the Purple One jammed on the Leno show. This is the get-dressed-up-and-get-ready-to-get-down show of the month. Start hydrating yourself now.
China Dolls
New York trio Renminbi was on the money when it chose a name for itself. Really. The moniker reflects the name for currency in the People’s Republic of China, where guitarist Lisa Liu’s ancestors were born. And it commemorates her finally meeting her paternal grandmother for the first time during a trip to Asia in…
Dethklok
Dethklok started out as a joke and became the biggest death-metal band in the history of Billboard’s album chart. Cartoon Network’s Metalocalypse launched in 2006 with a simple but esoteric premise: What if the planet’s most popular band was an extreme-metal group that actually lived in a world filled with the guts and gore that…
The Twistin’ Tarantulas
The Garage Bar hosts a Rockabilly Riot every Saturday through the end of the summer. And if burgers on the patio aren’t enough to get you out, come for the live music. This week, the Twistin’ Tarantulas could get a robot to swing its hips. The roots-rockin’ trio dress the part, but they otherwise avoid…
Wanna Bet?
Now that it’s worked out the kinks since its debut a couple of weeks ago, Track Side at Northfield Park is providing a much-needed watering hole for its betting clientele. With a full menu of liquor and beer, the club also sports a private betting area, access to the track and patio, and more than…
Langhorne Slim
Langhorne Slim takes his stage name from his Pennsylvania birthplace (population less than 2,000). His raw, rough-around-the-edges brand of folk music fits that small-town setting, blending vibrant guitar-picking with gravelly vocals and occasionally slowing it all down to sing a simple but heartfelt love song. Slim got his start in N.Y.C. clubs playing open-mic nights.…
ABC taps Strange Familiar for new Molly Ringwald show
The Strange Familiar has been made an integral part of the marketing campaign for ABC Family’s The Secret Life of the American Teenager, a new show from 7th Heaven’s creator, starring ’80s icon Molly Ringwald. The Akron band, which is led by former Jaded Era principals Kira Leyden and Jeff Andrea, is included in a…
Star Search
As a celebrity profiler, Cleveland native Scott Raab doesn’t shy away from asking about Ewan McGregor’s penis, Ryan Seacrest’s sexual orientation, or Dennis Rodman’s romp in the sack with Madonna. And you can read all the anecdotes he’s written for GQ and Esquire in his new book, Real Hollywood Stories, which he’ll sign tonight in…
Silver Apples
Silver Apples’ experimental electro-psych was so ahead of its time in the late ’60s that the band actually had to go into hiding for 25 years, just so everyone else could catch up. New Yorkers Danny Taylor (drums) and Simeon (vocals, synthesizer) released only two albums as Silver Apples before they vanished into the ether…
Radiohead’s best tops this week’s pop-culture picks
TOP PICK — Radiohead: The Best Of (Capitol/EMI) The two-CD Best Of includes 30 songs that range from “Creep” to Hail to the Thief. You really should own the original albums (start with The Bends and OK Computer), but cuts like “No Surprises” and “Fake Plastic Trees” hold up out of context. The DVD (available…
Shortt on Time
At 25, acoustic rocker Rachel Shortt has fronted a tween band, couch-surfed from coast to coast, and even slept underneath the Detroit Road bridge in Rocky River for a few nights. On her fifth CD, Shortt Stories, the Cleveland native chronicles her past in an angst-packed capsule. “My music is a direct reflection of everything…
The Black Dahlia Murder
Death metal can get a tad exhausting. The race for who can blast-beat the fastest or shred the most impossible riff often comes at the cost of actual songwriting. Plus, those growling demonic vocals are just plain goofy. The Black Dahlia Murder loads its songs with many death-metal conventions, but they’re tastefully done — or…
Ninja Gaiden II for Xbox goes heavy on the gore and glitches
It’s probably a good thing Game On wasn’t around to review Ninja Gaiden when it hit Xbox in 2004 — we probably would’ve written “an awesome, brutal, majestic action masterpiece,” then filled the rest of the space with crude crayon drawings of ninjas. Because really, there’d be nothing else to say. It’s easier to ramble…
Lake Wobe-here!
If you ask Sue Scott, it’s more than just folksy charm that appeals to listeners of NPR’s A Prairie Home Companion. She should know; she’s provided a character voice on the long-running program for 16 years. “I always thought the small-town appeal was what kept people interested. But it has nothing to do with that,”…
Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers
Baseball, apple pie, and Tom Petty: You don’t get more American than that. Petty first hit the airwaves when they were saturated with ham-fisted guitar riffs and masturbatory art-rock pretense. He reminded listeners what rock and roll was capable of, tying simple, direct lyricism to lean, muscular songs — which unpretentiously and unapologetically champion the…
Capsule reviews of current area theater presentations
Girls Night, The Musical — It’s difficult to knit a noose in the dark, using only the odd bits of string and fabric found in one’s purse. But that didn’t stop my mind from wandering during the performance of this steaming roadkill. Targeted at women and using existing songs (much like the Cleveland production of…
Hues Corporation
Feel the West Coast vibe at today’s opening of California as Muse at the Akron Art Museum — where the collection will contain 65 paintings and furniture pieces made in the early 20th century by the husband-and-wife team of Arthur and Lucia Mathews of San Francisco. The couple helped pioneer the California Decorative style, with…
Sloan
Canadian alt-rockers Sloan have been making riff-fueled music for 17 years now. In 2006, they released Never Hear the End of It, a 30-track behemoth that pretty much summed up everything good (those power-pop riffs) and bad (they can be tragically dull) about them. The just-out Parallel Play is a less-ambitious record of solid but…
Capsule reviews of current area art exhibitions
NEW Just Suppose — The art in this exhibition features the bizarre kinds of scenarios you’d expect to dream about after falling asleep on the beach: women wearing fish as hats, ocean waves appearing where there should be sky, an empty rowboat marooned in a desert landscape. It’s whimsical yet creepy photo-based work in which…
Leather & Laces
The image of a dude in a cowboy hat and leather chaps still sticks in Bernie Thiel’s mind as the most memorable sight at last year’s Bier Markt Ohio City Run & Crawl. Natch, he’s curious about the outfits that will be worn by more than 500 runners at today’s race. “I don’t know if…
The Black Angels
The Black Angels call their latest album Directions to See a Ghost. Judging from the music, we gather that the first step involves consuming tons of hallucinogenic drugs. More so than any of its contemporaries, this Austin fivesome pretty much requires some tripping to fully appreciate its expansive soundscapes. Organs, guitars, and voices swell and…
Anything Goes, Cole Porter’s shipboard romp, gets first-class treatment at Porthouse Theatre
One of the hidden dangers in producing such a tried-and-true show as Anything Goes — a show studded generously with iconic Cole Porter tunes and written in part by acclaimed humorist P.G. Wodehouse — is that the company might slack off and allow the material to sell itself. Fortunately, this is unlikely to occur in…
Studio City
On today’s Cleveland Artists Live/Work Tour, Lolly the Trolley will shuttle art aficionados to five mini-meccas of paintings and sculptures, in homes that double as studios. The stops include a cluster of houses on East 132nd Street in East Cleveland. “The city gets a bad rap as being dangerous, and people think it’s a war…
Usher
Usher spent the duration of his hit 2004 CD, Confessions, divulging one secret after another. On Here I Stand, his fifth album, the R&B lothario is tired of talking. It’s time for some action. “You get on top tonight/I’m on the bottom/Cuz we trading places/When I can’t take no more/You say you ain’t stopping/Cuz we…
Family troubles are dredged up, one by one, in Ensemble’s The Carpetbagger’s Children
Assembling an oral history of a family can be an engaging and enlightening project. But turning such material into a stage event can be a mixed blessing, as demonstrated by the Ensemble Theatre’s production of The Carpetbagger’s Children. This script by Horton Foote elegantly covers the history of the Thompson family, which is headed by…
Myspace to Grow
Ahleuchatistas guitarist Shane Perlowin remembers the “week of purgatory” in mid-May, when the trio was left without a drummer. Because the band had made a year’s worth of concert commitments — including tonight’s show in Cleveland — he and bassist Derek Poteat scrambled to find a replacement by placing an ad on their Myspace page.…
Dresden Dolls
The Dresden Dolls may play dress-up and mess around with the dark arts a bit, but this cabaret-punk duo digs deeper. No, Virginia is billed as a companion piece to the Dolls’ 2006 CD Yes, Virginia, but it isn’t so much a collection of outtakes from that record as it is a set of leftovers…
Harmony Korine breaks out the clown bikes, MJ impersonators, and flying nuns for Mister Lonely
A man in a Michael Jackson outfit rides hunched over the tiny frame of a clown bike. The background is a go-cart track, lined with brightly colored tires — the sky above, a billowing blue haze. Time slows to a crawl as the bike circles toward the camera. All is silent, save for Bobby Vinton’s…
Morphin’ Orphans
Welcome to the slums of the Big Apple, where a couple of homeless, orphaned siblings scrape by in the Ramin Bahrani-directed flick Chop Shop. In the shadows of Shea Stadium, 12-year-old Alejandro works at an auto-body shop — when he’s not selling bootlegged DVDs or snatching purses. His 16-year-old sister, Isamar, juggles her time between…
Duffy
This Welsh soul revivalist mines ’60s grooves on her debut album, but she’s no train wreck like last year’s breakthrough white R&B singer, Amy Winehouse. Duffy and producer Bernard Butler (who played guitar with ’90s Britpoppers Suede) craft an infectious set of original tunes on Rockferry that sound familiar, but still manage to surprise. The…
Get Smart redux is a rare TV remake that works
As old Broadway shows are revived, new Broadway shows get spun from old movies so that new movies may be fashioned from ancient TV series. It’s an iron law of the culture industry that turns out to be a pleasant surprise in the case of Get Smart, the late-’60s sitcom retooled as a vehicle for…
Heeere’s Johnny!
Yukster Johnny Sanchez sums up his debut season on MADtv as “a dream come true,” since he grew up on episodes of Saturday Night Live. But he thinks the two shows don’t compare. “The difference is with the writing on MAD,” says Sanchez, who’s in town this weekend for a series of stand-up gigs. “Many…
Nurses claim Dr. Walter Ruf took sexual harassment to a whole new level
While showering on Christmas Eve eight years ago, Cheryl Abels discovered a knot below her stomach. Her 44-year-old body, which had been sliced open three times to usher children into this world, was on intimate terms with pain. But this unidentified lump frightened her. Her doctor told her it was a hernia. So a few…
Joan as Police Woman
As a session musician, Joan Wasser has played violin with such diverse acts as Scissor Sisters, Sparklehorse, and Medeski Martin & Wood. On her second solo album as a singer-songwriter, she pares down the theatricality found on her debut, Real Life, and swaps it for spare piano-and-voice melancholia. Wasser occasionally enters Regina Spektor and Tori…
Mr. Gnome, the area’s second-hottest duo, makes a big noise on its debut album
Mr. Gnome spent the past year turning people on all over the country — even if a lot of those people weren’t always sure what they were listening to. An early review pegged the Cleveland duo as a hybrid of Portishead and Black Sabbath, which gets pretty close to nailing the full-frontal assault of the…
Street Beats
Gorilla Danish guitarist Randy Martin strums solo tonight on guitar and bass as he shares sidewalk time with the Olympic Brass and the Pool Hall Gang for the weekly Sparx in the City outdoor concert series in the Warehouse District. Martin’s appearance is a prelude to the release of his CD, Improvisations & Other Songs…
If Debbie Sutherland knocks a Democrat off the Board of Commissioners, she’ll have the Democrats to thank
On a sun-bleached Wednesday morning, Debbie Sutherland props her elbow on a podium, crosses one turquoise pump over the other, and waits. A 53-year-old Chris Evert look-alike in pearls, Sutherland is standing on the steps of the county administration building, ready to make some bold proclamations. The trouble is, there’s no one around to hear…
The Notwist
On the Notwist’s sixth album, The Devil, You + Me, Markus Acher sounds sick of his group: “Let’s just imitate the real until we find a better one/Remember the good lies.” And out the window go the pocket jug bands, the folded laptop ping-pong games, the sonic can openers, and almost everything else that clicked…
Is hipster metal for assholes? Two of our writers discuss
Like a lot of music critics, I don’t like metal. It’s not that I don’t like it, exactly; I just don’t get it. Those Cookie Monster vocals growling about ghostly warriors from ancient cities, buried beneath rubble eons ago — all lost on me. And during metal’s formative years, the ’80s, I was listening to…
Let’s Do Launch
You don’t have to brush up on the latest urban-planning lingo to hang with the dudes of Launch at tonight’s 1/3 Movie Night in Lakewood. But to help bring out the socio-political animals in the group of architects and downtown designers, sit back and watch a screening of Federico Fellini’s Amarcord, about growing up in…
