Cheese Cake

Wig-wearing singer has no tricks up his sleeve — just smooth sounds.

By Cris Glaser on Wed, May 24, 2006 at 4:00 am

Cleveland art

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Sporting an ill-fitting toupee, pianist Ari Friedman becomes alter ego Harry Bacharach tonight at the Barking Spider. His repertoire of cover songs includes tunes by everyone from Duke Ellington to Carole King. "I'm stuck in the '70s — when people played instruments without using distortion to build their sound," he says. "They didn't scream into the microphone, and you could understand the lyrics." The 30-year-old self-anointed "Funky Honky Monkey" recently released The Greens Blues, an environmental folk opus about a couple who evacuate earth because of global warming. "Where do we go when we can't live here anymore?" he asks. "It won't be long before it's too hot for us."
Mon., May 29, 10 p.m.