Ghost in the House
The house had been slowly slipping into decay for a century before the kids arrived. Years of weather had faded its wood to the color of storm clouds. In the yard, an old truck sank into the ground, rusting into red shards. Beyond it were oil drums, stacks of plywood, and discarded tires. Clutching flashlights,…
The Town Jewels
The good folks at Classics (9801 Carnegie Avenue, inside the InterContinental Hotel & Conference Center) really know how to throw a party, and last week’s blowout, honoring AAA’s Four- and Five-Diamond Award winners, was no exception. Chef de cuisine Guillaume Brard left no question as to why Classics has captured Ohio’s first and only Five-Diamond…
Radar Bros.
The Radar Bros. are a California trio (not siblings), seemingly dedicated to the notion of Neil Young’s After the Gold Rush and the Beatles’ Let It Be being the two greatest rock albums ever. Jim Putnam’s voice has that same forlorn, vulnerable, slightly quavering quality as the Godfather of Grunge/Messiah of Mope’s, and the Bros.’…
We Give Good Read
We Give Good Read No need for rebuttal: Bravo! I am a student in the dental hygiene class at Tri-C. I was aware of an upcoming article [“Pass Me, or I’ll Sue,” April 6] and was prepared to write a letter in response to any of Ms. Cummings’ ridiculous accusations. However, nobody could have done…
Non-Stop Bop
Now in its 26th year, the Tri-C JazzFest has become a welcome rite of spring in Cleveland, right up there with opening day at Jacobs Field and at least one April snowstorm. This year, the 10-day presentation (which runs from April 14-24 at various venues across town) spans the orthodox (the impeccably branded and tailored…
Strapping Young Lad
Strapping Young Lad’s Devin Townsend includes exclamation points in his liner-note lyrics, and his deranged delivery justifies the ostentatious punctuation. He chants “Fight!”, screams “No!!”, and rants about “Science!!! . . . and . . . Math!!!” in a tone that would make even the strictest homework-before-play parents back away from the door. Townsend’s manic…
Heart of Glass
Ira Glass maintains the same car-radio ritual on his drive to work every morning at Chicago’s WBEZ studios. Naturally, the host of National Public Radio’s This American Life would listen to the network’s Morning Edition. But to surf back and forth between its news show and Howard Stern? “I think he’s the most emotionally honest,…
Drama King
Sam Beam has never quite been the good-hearted alt-folk sweetheart that a cursory listen to his music as Iron & Wine would suggest. Hollywood music directors, equating Beam’s gingerly picked acoustic guitar and hushed harmony vocals with quiet nights beneath twinkling stars, have begun using Iron & Wine songs to soundtrack movie scenes that actually…
Mariah Carey
Full (and damning) disclosure: This correspondent and Mariah’s publicist were the only two people to publicly claim the universally reviled Glitter soundtrack was the best thing Ms. Carey had ever done. I was the only one who meant it and still insist that collection of ’80s-inspired froth and naked confessionals marked Mimi’s real emancipation. But…
This Week’s Day-By-Day Picks
Thursday, April 14 Sarah Strohmeyer loves her Bubbles. Bubbles Betrothed, the fifth book to feature her blond heroine, Bubbles Yablonsky, finds the hairdresser-cum-reporter-cum-sleuth investigating the death of a murder suspect while juggling an ex-husband, the Polish Mafia, and a boyfriend who pops the question under suspicious circumstances. Strohmeyer herself has done time behind the news…
April Shouters
T.S. Eliot dubbed April “the cruelest month,” but even The Waste Land neglected to point out that National Humor and National Anxiety Month share the same calendar page. April also plays host to such vastly undercelebrated holidays as Tell-a-Lie Day, Plan Your Epitaph Day, Don’t Go to Work Unless It’s Fun Day, and Go for…
Long-View
Another week, another pale quartet from England looking to sneak into American record buyers’ hearts before Coldplay’s upcoming album. Manchester’s Long-View are well-meaning chaps: Like fellow Manc-rock outfits Doves and Elbow, they’ve responded to what they no doubt view as a cheapening of musical values — in the band’s bio, singer Rob McVey warns against…
Sum Revelation
Don’t you hate when wiseasses get all conscientious on you? Like when the loudmouthed troublemaker you’ve known since junior high suddenly turns vegan and starts doing that freaky twirly dance at Dave Matthews concerts. Look at Sum 41’s recent conversion from goofy pop-punks to message-spreading saviors in a similar light. Before last year’s Chuck, in…
Beyond Reason
Mark Hunter’s secret is out, spilling through the speakers with the volume of a 12-car pileup. Sitting in the control room of Strongsville’s Spider Studios, the singer blasts a handful of rough, mostly unmixed tracks from Chimaira’s forthcoming album. Not even the band’s manager has heard these songs yet — though we’re pretty certain the…
Tish Hinojosa
Where did your long hair go? Where is the girl we used to know? She’s still here. She just isn’t a girl anymore. Like most women pushing 50, Tish Hinojosa has opted for the more matronly short coif, shedding the long raven tresses that were so familiar to her fans for so many years. Something…
Frankly Speaking
SUN 4/17 Project/Object isn’t merely a Frank Zappa tribute band. Sure, its repertoire consists entirely of songs from Zappa’s catalog, but few cover bands could boast of having two former members of Zappa’s band — guitarist Ike Willis and saxophonist Napoleon Murphy Brock — and a musical philosophy that the late rocker-composer-guitarist would admire. “We’ve…
Hip-Hop Hooray
Oberlin College will host Hip-Hop Conference 2005: Political Action and Social Responsibility Wednesday, April 13, through Sunday, April 17. Featuring live performances and seminars, the conference focuses on hip-hop as a culture. “The idea is to present a positive view of hip-hop, counter to the stereotypical image most frequently portrayed in popular media, characterized by…
Nathaniel Maloney
Nathaniel Maloney never ceases to follow his heart — even when it leads him off a cliff. The Burton native sings of glowing campfires and fields covered with dew so sweetly that Old Empty Farmhouse occasionally feels syrupy enough to soak your Eggos. “We need to share with each other/We need to help one another/Lend…
They Got Game
SAT 4/16 At the inaugural Black College All-Star Basketball Game & Celebrity Extravaganza last year, the 14,000 spectators far exceeded John Pace’s expectations. He predicts even more fans will turn out for its sophomore outing, thanks to such added attractions as scantily clad pompom girls and a Kill Bill star. The daylong blowout starts with…
The Psychedelic Furs
While most know the Psychedelic Furs for the kicky new-wave romp “Pretty in Pink,” the origins of the English band are rooted in darker icons like David Bowie and the Velvet Underground. But at its recent Boston show, there were few traces of this moodiness — namely, a funereal rendition of “Sister Europe,” John Ashton’s…
20goto10
When 20goto10’s Sara Eugene announces, “It’s a shame to be so young,” it’s easy to understand where she’s coming from. 20goto10’s throbbing synthpop might have made the band a household name two decades ago. Instead, this trio finds itself ensconced in a new-wave revival alongside acts like Adult. and Ladytron. Atop bright, buoyant synth and…
Ten Minutes of Fame
4/15-5/8 In Ten Minutes From Cleveland, 10 stories, each running 10 minutes, offer a look at the city through some of its historical landmarks. “The arc of the piece is that it occurs in one day in April,” says director Eric Schmiedl. “We start on the Detroit-Superior Bridge at six in the morning and end…
Matt Sweeney and Bonnie “Prince” Billy
On their superb collaboration Superwolf, Matt Sweeney and Will Oldham (a.k.a. Bonnie “Prince” Billy) play ballads with the intimacy of bunkmates, conjuring a parched farm where panther-girls and man-donkeys toil and spank one another. The sweet, absurd imagery would sound cloying in most hands, but not here, thanks to Oldham’s unself-conscious delivery and Sweeney’s fragile…
Hair Today
FRI 4/15 A Flock of Seagulls singer Mike Score hasn’t had his space-age hairdo since the ’80s, when the smash single “I Ran” ruled the airwaves for one summer. But it’s still a hot topic. “In the ’80s, you needed a strong image to come across,” says Score. “And just because you had a weird…
Outrageous Cherry
Over the past 10 years, Detroit’s Outrageous Cherry has released a slew of critically acclaimed psychedelic-tinged records, most recently on N.Y.C. ’60s-obsessed imprint Rainbow Quartz. Though known to be quite experimental at times — the band has been compared to the likes of Wire, Velvet Underground, Shadows of Knight, Hawkwind, and classic Motown — Outrageous…
Bayou Polka
Almost as wide as he is tall, with a round but unremarkable face, Schultze doesn’t look like a rebel. Truth to tell, he looks like Curly of Three Stooges fame or, less kindly, a mass murderer (well, he does bear a passing but disturbing resemblance to John Wayne Gacy). Schultze — whether that’s a first…
Mindless Self Indulgence
“You guys, man, you’ve gotta get organized,” Mindless Self Indulgence singer Jimmy Urine says scornfully, chiding an unruly and mostly hostile audience. “When I say ‘We,’ you say ‘Suck.'” That concert snippet opens MSI’s 2000 cult classic Frankenstein Girls Will Seem Strangely Sexy. Since then, the group has opened for its share of inappropriate acts,…
Director’s Cuts
A pair of deranged Danes called The Green Butchers are likely to win the filmic cordon bleu for cannibal cuisine. Hannibal Lecter himself might savor something called “Svend’s Chicky-Wickies” — not poultry at all, but filet of electrician, expertly cut from a tender portion of leg and lovingly marinated overnight before making its way to…
Maroon 5
There’s so much wrong with pop-soul slicksters Maroon 5’s Songs About Jane — which, after an inconspicuous release in June 2002, has become a Grammy-winning, multiplatinum hit — that it actually ends up kind of right. For starters, singer-guitarist Adam Levine sings in a pinched, blue-eyed tenor that shouldn’t indicate much more than fussy Hollywood…
Just for Laughs
Heaven is a place where the French are cooks, the Brits are cops, and the Germans are auto mechanics. And hell is where the French are mechanics, the Brits are cooks, and the Germans are cops. Nationality stereotypes have fueled punch lines ever since the first border was drawn. But no nationality has fared worse…
Paul Westerberg
Though the immediacy of “I Will Dare”‘s first loping chords would suggest otherwise, it’s been nearly a decade and a half since Paul Westerberg fronted the mythically sloppy, booze-fueled Replacements. Which is longer than he was even in the group. Westerberg has been on his own for a while, but after recording his last three…
Extreme Musical
In almost every Roadrunner cartoon, there’s a moment when Wile E. Coyote is holding a package from the Acme Company close to his face and wondering whether he should open it. Of course, he does, and after shaking off the explosion that’s turned his dome into a charred stump, he’s back on the chase again.…
. . . And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead
It is, without exception, bad form for a group to sing derisively about MTV on a single that will actually find its way onto the network’s rotation. This is something you’d expect from Jay-Z or late-period Duran Duran, not from Austin’s Trail of Dead, kings of the volume-crackling mayhem and violent instrument smashings. Sure, the…
What? Me Work?
Susan Gwinn checked her e-mail dozens of times on March 23. Each time, she watched the Ohio Democratic Party slump a little further into its own grave. There was the e-mail from the Young Democrats, urging people to register for the annual conference. Another from the Ohio Audubon Society asked recipients to support improved rail…
On Stage
Beauty and the Beast — Carousel’s version of the ubiquitous show features some terrifically enjoyable performances, but it lacks visual appeal. Many scenes — even intimate two-person moments — are played on the theater’s immense but essentially bare stage, sometimes in front of a painted backdrop or a silvery curtain. At times, it feels like…
Overkill
Twenty years strong, Overkill may never get its due. The Jersey band has long been relegated to thrash’s B-squad, though it’s stayed in better shape than nearly all its peers and superiors. The band’s last disc, 2003’s Killbox 13 (as in, “Hey, Metallica, Megadeth, and Anthrax: We have 13 albums”), wasn’t so much underrated as…
The Paper Lion
Ellen Whitehouse flips through a photo album at her kitchen table, her eyes growing wide at the sight of Boomerang. “Look!” she says excitedly, “there’s Boomie with his Lion King.” In the picture, a lion cub stretches lazily out on a living-room floor, ignoring a stuffed Disney animal. Whitehouse smiles. “Boomie really hated that thing.”…
On View
NEW Cleveland Institute of Art Graduates 2005 — Despite its focus on drawing and painting, this enjoyable new show of works by graduating CIA seniors offers plenty of variety. There’s room, in other words, for Jonathan Clemente’s strangely fascinating monochrome bundles of random objects wrapped in yarn, like a spider’s victims, alongside all the oil…
Alternative Press presents the First Annual Empty Mouths Tour Ohio
In the studio, California’s Stole Your Woman supplements its powerful, fun — like, really fun — pop-punk with dark undercurrents that take the form of crashing piano and swelling strings. Live, the fancy stuff is gone, but worry not: The naked mix makes it even easier to feel the tastefully shredding guitar solos move through…
Sweet Revenge
The Pulitzer committee was apparently unmoved by the sophisticated analysis and breathtaking poetry found each week in First Punch. So it decided to give its prize for newspaper commentary to The Plain Dealer’s Connie Schultz. After all, she needed it. She’s lucky to even have a job. So says Channel 19. Only a few months…
New Era, Old Style
The menu choices at Akron’s New Era Restaurant certainly seemed simple enough: coleslaw, applesauce, or Spanish rice; hamburger, cheeseburger, or goose liver; pork chops, spaghetti, or “our 75-year-old signature dish,” chicken paprikash. (And no, darling, that doesn’t mean the paprikash on your plate has been cooking since 1930.) So, how hard could it be to…
Miles Maeda
Deep-house DJ Miles Maeda is into art, life, and the art of life. When the veteran Chicago mixmaster isn’t spinning or preparing his next mix, he teaches classes in Rudra Yoga, which he says “assists in unifying the mental, emotional, and moving parts of our being so that our presence is full, our passions are…
