Flats Go Pop
Tonight’s fireworks extravaganza explodes over the Lake Erie shoreline to kick off Cleveland’s annual Waterfront Festival. For the fifth straight year, the Flats Oxbow Association has hired Pennsylvania pyromaniac Chris Mele to design a 20-minute show to be launched at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River. The Independence Day celebrations continue tomorrow with free, self-guided…
The Watson Twins
You probably first heard the Watson Twins on Jenny Lewis’ Rabbit Fur Coat. Chandra and Leigh Watson sang backup and received co-billing on the Rilo Kiley frontwoman’s debut solo album two years ago, instantly netting indie cred. On their second album, Fire Songs, the Watsons aim for a more mainstream audience with sweet songs sung…
After years of going head-to-head, Scene and Free Times will become one
It’s bound to happen: One day, after a long afternoon of plundering your money, Jimmy Dimora is going to eat Cleveland. He’ll wake in the middle of the night, check his fridge, and realize that he finished off the rib roast the last time he got up. So he’ll douse some salt on Terminal Tower,…
I Am a Camera
Peek inside the boyhood home of Beatle Paul McCartney as his younger bro, Mike, takes off the wraps to his photo exhibit, Liverpool Life, at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. The snaps were taken in the ’60s at the height of the Fab Four’s pop-charts dominance. And as Paul’s sibling, Mike gained carte…
Weezer
On Weezer’s sixth album — the third that the band has named after itself — frontman Rivers Cuomo follows the pattern he laid out on 1994’s debut and the 2001 outing (more commonly known as the Blue Album and the Green Album, respectively). The latest Weezer — the Red Album — features similar cover art…
Don King’s knockout video game tops this week’s pop-culture picks
TOP PICK — Don King Presents: Prizefighter (2K Sports) Here’s something new: a boxing video game with a real-deal story. Gamers push their fighters through the usual training stages, but injuries and crooked officials can sideline your bruiser. The ring action in this Xbox 360 game is kinda familiar, but getting there is a knockout.…
Burning Down the House
Miami DJ Sean Kingston, who made a meteoric rise on the hip-hop charts, makes a pit stop in the Flats tonight for Sizzle Fest, with opening acts Awkward Silence, the Crystal Method, and DJs Anthony Attalla, Misterbradleyp, and Rob Ford. Since Kingston’s self-titled CD dropped last summer, the 18-year-old turntable whiz has sold 6 million…
Scene celebrates the Fourth of July with some of America’s most rocked-out moments
Rock and roll has had a mighty impact on American culture and, consequently, the nation’s identity over the past 50-plus years. More often than not, it’s intersected with politics and whatever other social unrest has afflicted our country. With Independence Day right around the corner, we celebrate some of the critical musical moments that helped…
The child of a secret underground adoption goes hunting for her past
Out there, in her little house on the mountain, the days passed slowly for Debbie Boursier — much more slowly than they had in Cleveland. She’d moved to that rural patch of Rapid City, South Dakota, with two toddlers and a husband. She hadn’t wanted to go, but Charlie was a second lieutenant in the…
The Great White Way
If white is good enough for rapper Sean “Puffy” Combs, it stands to reason that Cleveland playboy Arnold Hines would host tonight’s True White Affair in ivory tails and top hat.For five years, Hines has thrown the all-white blowout to parrot similar parties that Combs has synchronized in his East Hampton home and in Saint-Tropez.…
Chicago returns with a record that’s been sitting on the shelves for 15 years
If you had asked Lee Loughnane, in the summer of 1993, what he thought people would be talking to him about in 2008, it’s a pretty safe bet he wouldn’t have said the album he just made with his band Chicago. A decade and a half after it was recorded, rejected, and consigned to great-lost-album…
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…
Blogonnit!
Husband-and-wife comedians Brian McKim and Traci Skene may share the same bed, but their routines are as far apart as the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. She’s more about audience interaction; he’s into setups and punch lines. “Before I became a comic, I didn’t know a darn thing about geography,” says McKim. “I thought Winnipeg was…
College Night
Now that school’s out, the subterranean B-Side Liquor Lounge is hosting the city’s hottest College Night. Most of the CSU and JCU students that packed the place have gone home for the summer, but undergrads from OU, Bowling Green, and Toledo have returned to mix and mingle, shoulder to shoulder. Modeling the Urban Outfitters Summer…
Capsule reviews of current area art exhibitions
NEW Andy Warhol: Prints, Paintings, Photographs — It’s too bad Andy Warhol didn’t live long enough to experience Facebook. He’d definitely have an awesome profile pic, as shown by this exhibit, which boasts his connections and networking skills. The show is composed of Warhol’s work from the Allen Memorial Art Museum’s permanent collection, including a…
Swingers’ Clubs
All that stands between you and an elite group of six duffers in the 45 Holes for $45 Hall of Fame are 12 hours, 14,352 yards, and about 250 swings. The premise is fairly simple: Golf two 18-hole and one 9-hole rounds in the same day. For your troubles, you score a commemorative T-shirt and…
Cabinet
These jam-band newbies came together two years ago as a sort of rootsy bluegrass group in Pennsylvania. A trio of Clevelanders joined a little later, and Cabinet took on a sharper rock edge. Still, with fiddle and mandolin players in the band, there are still plenty of bluegrass sounds on its self-titled debut album and…
Checking in with the most buzzed-about CDs of 2008’s second quarter
The Fourth of July is the time of year when families get together for cookouts. Kids stay up late to watch fireworks. And music critics compile their midyear Top 10 lists. Yes, we live for this kinda thing. Never mind that there’s still six long months of records that will be released, reviewed, and forgotten…
Poetry in Motion
As a tune-up for a national competition of teen poets in Washington D.C. next week, Cleveland’s six-member Youth Poetry Slam Team gives a free demo tonight to show why it has a good chance to vocally trounce other squads from around the country. As his contribution, Cleveland School of the Arts senior Eric Odum will…
Jägermeister Music Tour
Props to the fine folks at Jägermeister — for both their 56-herb wonder potion/cure-all and not so quietly maintaining the most consistent metal tour of its kind (alumni include Slipknot, the Cult, and Chimaira). The latest Jägerbomb features Wednesday 13, Soil, and headliners Type O Negative, who play severe Halloween rock with intensity. The Drab…
Local hardcore legends Face Value reunite
Most of Face Value’s classic lineup will play a reunion show on Saturday, July 5, at Now That’s Class (11213 Detroit Avenue). “Face Value had their share of ragers, both in the band and in the audience,” recalls guitarist Aaron Melnick, who played with contemporaries Integrity. “A lot of the younger people I know on…
Super TroopersBig Apple troubadours roll their boogie-mobile into town to break your heart and put it back together again.
With country-rockin’ singer-guitarist Kara Suzanne at the wheel, the Kings County Caravan leaves its New York home base behind for an “Americana grab bag of country, boogie-woogie, soul, and blues” tunes in Cleveland. Along for the ride are fellow pickers Kenny Cambre, Steve Lewis, and the Reverend John DeLore. And their hour-long set ranges from…
Amps II Eleven
Once again, the Amps will go to 11 as the Parma rawkers reunite for a one-time-only show. Scene readers voted Amps II Eleven the city’s best rock band in 2005 — thanks to gritty tunes like “Gas Ass or Grass” and “Bourbon Sprawl.” The punky metallic group formed from the ashes of Stepsister and includes…
Zero Defex
Zero Defex may have been a mere flash pot in American hardcore, but they were a firestorm in Akron/Cleveland during the early ’80s. The band helped nurture the small but burgeoning local scene for two years, before it disappeared into obscurity by late 1983, leaving only a four-song trace of its existence on the New…
May the G-Force Be With You
Doug Marsh chuckles about the time he made a news reporter drive a six-foot-long go-kart. Because the car pulled more than 3 Gs of force as it rounded the corners, the journalist quickly discovered how out of shape he was after only nine laps on the track. The 75 competitors in today’s Eastlake Grand Prix…
Dirty Dozen Brass Band
If there’s anything post-Katrina that New Orleanians have come to value, it’s stability, familiarity, and tradition. For a city nearly lost through force of nature and the folly of men, that trinity gives hope and direction, providing both a sense of history and a legacy worth preserving. Crescent City icons the Dirty Dozen Brass Band…
Hot Ham & Cheese
Cleveland power trio Hot Ham & Cheese moves between punk, metal, and hard rock like it’s throwing a triple combo to your ribs, kidney, and head. Revolution & Revelations isn’t exactly a knockout blow, but it packs some punch. Singer-guitarist Charlie gets political on “New Bomb/Vietnam,” singing, “Said it wouldn’t be Vietnam/Just gonna get Saddam.”…
New York Grooves
The last place you’d think you’d track down Jason Rabinowitz would be in an infant-day-care center in the middle of New York. But on a recent Wednesday afternoon, that’s where The Bloodsugars frontman was standing, ready to entertain a classroom of newborns, toddlers, and their adult companions. “It’s like this live, 45-minute Sesame Street. You…
28 North
Originally formed as a power trio by Cleveland-born drummer Tyler Bond and guitarists Mike Lindner and Alex Stanton, the now-Pittsburgh-based 28 North steers into new territory with the addition of bass player Jonathan Colman. All four guys are school-bus drivers — an ideal day job, since it allows for weekends and nights off . .…
In Cleveland Heights, Ariyoshi serves up whimsical adventures
Fuel costs and the dollar being what they are, this probably won’t be the year we jet off to the Far East. But that doesn’t mean we don’t crave a little adventure. So when we head out to one of our region’s many Asian restaurants, you can bet we want to score something more exotic…
Ribs & Bibs
Guitarist Kevin Eubanks slides off his sidekick chair on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno to headline this weekend’s Rib, White & Blue Food Festival in Akron. The 9 p.m. concert follows an afternoon of shows, as patrons chow down on tasty slabs of ribs from a dozen chefs. The blowout is meant to be…
Less Than Jake
Remember when all those high-school marching-band nerds joined ska-punk bands in the mid-’90s, thereby making them the cool kids on the block for about five minutes? Remember how annoying all those bands were? Well, some of them are still around. Florida’s Less Than Jake just released its seventh album of horny pop-punk. GNV FLA sounds…
806 Martini & Wine Bar mural is worth a double take
Long and leggy, the come-hither honey on the wall outside Tremont’s 806 Martini & Wine Bar (806 Literary Road, 216-862-2912) is more than just a pretty face. Rather, the wall-spanning mural, by local artist Mike McNamara, is a symbol, epitomizing the laid-back vibe and casual ‘tude the lounge hopes to channel when it reopens on…
Take Me to the Flaming River
Long ago in China, riverboat races simulated the twists and turns of dragons to encourage a prosperous harvest. Fast-forward thousands of years, and see hundreds of Northeast Ohioans paddle the Cuyahoga River during today’s Dragon Boat Festival as 20 crew members, a cadence drummer, and a steersman glide a 40-foot canoe through a 500-meter course.…
Lyle Lovett
This tall-haired Texan has written some brilliant songs over the years. Too bad he’s mostly known as the weird-looking guy who was once married to Julia Roberts. Lovett’s 20-year career as one of the nation’s most steady and eccentric troubadours continues on 2007’s It’s Not Big It’s Large — which is stuffed with his usual…
Letters published July 2, 2008
“Hurricane Tropical,” June 25 No Place Like Home . . . except when thugs run rampant: I grew up in this neighborhood in the ’80s. I used to walk down Storer Avenue at all hours. Never once did I feel threatened. There were no drugs, besides maybe a little marijuana. All of my friends went…
Outside the Box
In Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen of Verona, it’s no coincidence that Julia desperately tries to piece together a love note she’s ripped to shreds, as she mutters, “Be calm, good wind. Blow not a word away.” Artistic director Terry Burgler insists the line is intentional and a reminder that the Bard’s plays were originally performed outdoors,…
Coldplay
Coldplay’s career is a lot like Barack Obama’s presidential campaign: It’s all about rejecting old frameworks — just replace “liberal vs. conservative” with “cool vs. uncool.” Just as Obama succeeds by ignoring baby boomers’ narcissistic squabbling, Coldplay’s music — which was already plenty adventurous before Brian Eno showed up to produce Viva La Vida or…
Hancock squanders potential greatness with lame humor and a half-baked hero
The Sixth Sense, starring Bruce Willis as a dead man, was writer-director M. Night Shyamalan’s breakthrough, but its follow-up, Unbreakable, starring Bruce Willis as the walking dead reborn as a superhero, was the filmmaker’s masterpiece. It remains the most quietly influential of all recent superhero movies, the unacknowledged template for directors looking to make the…
It’s Faire to Say
Laura Lagasse wants you to bite into her hot buns. Seriously. And you’ll find her portraying Hilde the German baker at the 16th annual Great Lakes Medieval Faire in Rock Creek. Throughout six straight weekends, a part of the Ashtabula County town morphs into the fictional 13th-century village of Avaloch, where spectators can bump into…
Hercules & Love Affair
DJ Andy Butler is a champion of saucy, sweaty disco and house. But his debut album — made with a crew of N.Y.C. singers and musicians — hits all the emotions that dance music used to effortlessly express back in the day. Hercules and Love Affair layers soulful voices on top of brassy disco and…
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, at the Cleveland Shakespeare Festival, offers a humorous take on philosophy and mortality
While many plays celebrate the glory and nobility of the average person, the fact remains that we ordinary blokes are nothing more than insignificant ciphers in the march of history. That sad fact is captured in the wonderful absurdist imaginings of playwright Tom Stoppard in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Produced in a substantially abridged…
Public Squares
Stan Kawecki considers this weekend’s Touch a Quarter Century square-dancing convention a chance to hang with 1,000 of his closest buddies again. It’s better still that the Denver-based International Association of Gay Square Dance Clubs has handpicked Cleveland for its 25th annual hootenanny. “A lot of it is just to socialize, so it’s more like…
Alanis Morissette
Alanis Morissette doesn’t wear Guy Sigsworth well. The British producer (who’s worked with Seal and Britney Spears) was supposed to embellish the perpetually bitter singer — kinda like how a well-chosen accessory should complement an outfit. Unfortunately, Sigsworth’s contributions turn out to be more shroud than shawl. Morissette comes off like an afterthought on Flavors…
Everyone’s falling in love in Two Gentlemen of Verona, at the Ohio Shakespeare Festival
As light Shakespearean comedies go, Two Gentlemen of Verona is about as helium-filled as any, trotting out all the expected plotting devices (disguises, buffoons, surprise revelations, etc.) without any deeper thoughts at work. And none of that is a problem, as long as the cast can keep the pace brisk and the wordplay engaging. Under…
Patriot Act
Blossom Music Festival conductor Loras John Schissel has given himself a fair amount of leeway in choosing the repertoire for tonight’s An American Salute concert and pyrotechnic display. But one thing is certain: He must end the show with the patriotic favorite the 1812 Overture by Tchaikovsky. “You can’t have the fourth of July without…
The Virgins
These N.Y.C. boys come on like the Strokes with a penchant for discos, rich girls, and coke. So yeah, they’re pretty much like the Strokes, but you can dance to them. With their self-titled debut, the Virgins play like four downtown party guys who thought it would be cool to make a record. There are…
A plan to secure Cleveland sends the police union’s boss off the deep end
Summer is back, which means our city’s storied criminal set have fully awakened from their slumber and are ready take off their shirts, steal your plumbing, and hit the local pool for a game of Drown the Lifeguard. In response, Cleveland councilmen hope to use private community-development funds to hire off-duty cops to patrol their…
