Music for the Messes
4311 Lorain Avenue used to be the home of the Hungarian Singing Society. Despite the name, the spartan, dusky cavern was a clubhouse more than a concert hall; a blue-collar preserve where heavily callused men named Pete or Stu could stop for a beer and a few frames of bowling after a hard day blowtorching…
Krumble
With a fairly predictable proto-metal howl, Krumble comes across on Thirteen as guitar-reliant racket that ultimately winds up lurching toward overblown progressive-rock territory. The band’s got bombastic guitar riffs, crunching, monstrous drumbeats, and trudging rhythms that any workmanlike hard-rock leaning band worth its weight in black T-shirts should have. But it really doesn’t have any…
The Man Who
Paul McGuinness has never thought of himself as a teacher of life lessons, so it comes as a bit of a surprise for him to hear it relayed that Kelly Curtis considers him an adviser–hell, a mentor. It comes as even more of a shock to discover that Curtis recalls exactly what it was McGuinness…
Grist for the Mills
Savoring a swig of Kucinich’s whine: Congratulations on the well-researched and balanced coverage of the LTV mess [“Slow Burn,” March 22]. Not only were you professional enough to give all involved parties their say, but you were brave enough to lay the blame right where it belongs — on the horrific managerial decisions made right…
Three Into Two Won’t Go
The first image spotlighted in Don McBride’s elegant set for The Dying Gaul is the gleaming marble buttocks of a naked soldier impaled by a Roman centurion. This serves as a high-toned metaphor for a homoerotic parable focusing on the damage inflicted by Hollywood’s morally bankrupt power brokers on serious artists, making this another battle…
Pleasure Cruise
Captain Barnacle Bill was a big, big man. Legs like tree trunks. Arms of iron. And broad, coarse features that belied his dancing eyes and homely grin. Ol’ Bill loved nothing better than to sail the seas along the stormy New England coast, and crab, lobster, shrimp, and maybe even the occasional cod trembled at…
Gothic Revival
It would seem vampires are mortal after all, at least in the Cleveland goth scene. After a decade prowling the moody world of the region’s undead, the goth quartet Lestat broke up last year, but drummer and programmer Timothy Smith will debut his new band, Ultra-Violet, Friday night at the Phantasy in Lakewood. “The thing…
Say Uncle
The former Old Mission restaurant in Solon has been under the remodeling knife since February and will reopen in early May as Zio Italian Bistro (28554 Miles Road). New owners Clyde and Maureen (“Mo”) Mart are behind the transformation, and the 240-seat spot is shaping up to be a real beauty, with European antiques, vintage…
Cuban Import
It took Dizzy Gillespie’s disregard of the U.S. embargo on Cuba to introduce Cuban jazz pianist Chucho Valdés to American audiences. In the mid-1970s, Vald´s was performing in Cuba with Irakere, a band he had founded in 1967 as the Orquestra Cubana de Moderna Musica, when Gillespie organized a Cuban tour of American jazz musicians…
Action, Not Words
Tim Scanlin’s band, the Actionslacks, has often been lumped in with the lo-fi indie rock clan that includes acts such as Pavement, Guided by Voices, and Sebadoh. Now, having a record out that was produced by Burning Airlines’ J. Robbins (Promise Ring), the band is weathering the emo-core tag. But when it comes to playing…
Heavenly Creatures
You may not know the name Anthony Anderson yet, but you will. Having had significant roles in four major films last year (Big Momma’s House, Me Myself & Irene, Romeo Must Die, and Urban Legends: Final Cut), he’s trying to top himself this year with appearances in five. Already he’s been a cowardly henchman in…
Hallowed Dolly
A few weeks ago, the Beachland hosted two separate concerts: The Stone Coyotes, a rock trio from Massachusetts, played in the Tavern, and the White Stripes, a duo out of Detroit, performed in the ballroom. As a matter of pure coincidence, both bands ended up doing haunting covers of the Dolly Parton song “Jolene,” a…
You Will Love It
Josie and the Pussycats is not a comedy, and it’s even possible the movie’s not a work of fiction, despite being “based on” Dan DeCarlo’s 38-year-old Archie Publishing comic book. There’s very little that’s funny about a movie that reveals, in horrific detail, what some of us have suspected for years: Record labels are inserting…
The Smut Peddlers
Spending a couple of years strapped to a bed in a mental institution is more likely to nurture psychosis than cure it. Though MC Cage was a hip-hopper long before his alleged commitment to a New York state nuthouse, his emceeing took a turn for the psychotically perverse once he reemerged as one of two…
Dirt Farmer
September 9, 1966: Adam Sandler is born in Brooklyn, New York. He is raised in Manchester, New Hampshire. September 1987: Sandler joins Ken Ober, Colin Quinn, and Denis Leary as cast member on MTV’s game show Remote Control. Sometime in 1989: Sandler lands first starring role in a movie, playing stand-up comedian Shecky Moskowitz in…
The Songs Remain the Same
In advance of the AC/DC concert April 6 at Gund Arena, we ran a small item in which one of our writers argued the band’s creative energy had waned. He suggested that the group has been rewriting the same song over and over since, say, 1980’s Back in Black. In response, we got a phone…
Killing With Kindness
French director Patrice Leconte is a chameleon-like talent: Among his films to reach American screens are the psychological thriller Mr. Hire, the period satire Ridicule, and the offbeat comic romance The Girl on the Bridge. But in truth, all of Leconte’s films are romances at heart, though they are often complex, and it is unclear…
Godsmack
Alice in Chains, meet Alice in Aggroland. Boston’s Godsmack has taken grunge’s bass-driven toxic sludge and existential angst to its high-gloss, prime-time logical conclusion, making the opportunistic quartet perhaps the most prominent Ozzfest-playin’ neometal outfit who won’t make time for Jay-Z. Trading heroin-soaked sincerity for accessibility, frontman Sully Erna affects a perfect Layne Staley growl,…
Girl Afraid
“Keep a diary, and one day it’ll keep you,” said Mae West, and while the sentiment rings true, it does little to explain the mystery of why Helen Fielding’s sliver of literary history managed to keep anyone. Fluffy, shrill, and approximately as deep as Cosmo, the book somehow hit home for a lot of people,…
Semisonic
“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end,” sings Semisonic’s Dan Wilson, and with that, the Minneapolis trio’s breakthrough hit “Closing Time” launched the career of a sensitive-guy singer-songwriter who seemed as if he really understands. Three years later, it has all paid off. On Semisonic’s new album, All About Chemistry, Wilson’s got sex…
Hit Man For Hire
Eric Brewer’s smile breaks easily into a laugh, but his eyes always stay on you. Sometimes, when he’s suspicious, they harden into an unnerving stare. “How am I going to look in all this?” he asks. He has just spent three hours talking about his past as a journalist, activist, self-appointed crime fighter, and poison…
The Silos
Shortly after the release of its debut some 15 years ago, the Silos scored Best New American Band honors in Rolling Stone. And if this sort of media tribute translated into sales figures, Silos prime mover Walter Salas-Humara would be troubled by figuring out where to build Graceland West. Instead, Salas-Humara has slogged his way…
The Puff Daddy of Bail Bonds
Another hour has passed. Time to fire up the spaceship. Every weekday for the last six months, Donnell Mitchell’s Ford Aerostar has idled on West Third Street, across from the Justice Center. By order of the city, he moves the van every hour, sometimes only as far as the next parking meter. More billboard than…
Ani DiFranco
White girls can’t funk — somebody should tell Ani DiFranco this. Her last album, 1999’s To the Teeth, was an awkward, clumsy stroll through loose jams and barely-there grooves. In a way, it made sense, because after 10 years of DiFranco playing the indie-girl/entrepreneur/neo-folkie role for anyone with a camera and an ear, the album…
Dead Men Waiting
Since 1963, dead men in Ohio have not walked. They’ve waited. The one exception, Wilford Berry, literally asked the state to kill him. But on Tuesday, Clevelander Jay D. Scott, convicted of shooting a delicatessen owner in 1983, may become the first person in 38 years to be put to death against his will. Ohio…
Creeper Lagoon
If it’s true that the greatest art comes from tension and conflict, Take Back the Universe (And Give Me Yesterday), Creeper Lagoon’s latest album, is one bad-ass piece of work. Since being named Best New Artist of 1998 in Spin magazine for its full-length debut I Become Small and Go, Creeper Lagoon has toured all…
Wyandotte? Why Not?
Mike Gallagher suffers from a common North Coast affliction. He’s a partisan of the Tribe, that group of semiliterate millionaires that is the pride of Cleveland. But every spring, he must balance his affections with shame over the Chief Wahoo logo. Such internal conflict is troublesome to Gallagher, a school administrator. “I go out to…
Andy Laster
An important figure in the current new music scene, alto saxophonist Andy Laster leads an all-star quartet here with trumpeter/cornetist Herb Robertson, bassist Drew Gress, and drummer Tom Rainey. While certainly challenging, the group’s music is also accessible, and there’s even a standard on the disc, Kurt Weill’s “Here I’ll Stay.” Laster, however, wrote the…
