Pay for DNA
Supporters of Clarence Elkins make a compelling case that he was wrongly convicted of murdering his mother-in-law and raping his six-year-old niece. There was no forensic evidence linking him to the crimes. The police investigation was riddled with errors and omissions. In the end, Elkins was found guilty largely on the traumatized girl’s testimony. She…
The Yardbirds
Original Yardbirds Chris Dreja (rhythm guitar) and Jim McCarty (drums) believe it’s time to give their old band its due as one of the flagships of the British Invasion. They’re right. The Yardbirds were probably the most underappreciated of the ’60s U.K. bands. They were the British act most faithful to 1950s urban blues and…
The Subhumans
During the golden age of punk in the early ’80s, the Subhumans (U.K.) covered more artistic ground than most of their contemporaries, gradually moving beyond Sex Pistols-influenced sounds to progressive hardcore, climaxing with the 1984 rock opera Cradle to the Grave — the British punk equivalent of Quadrophenia. So they probably deserve to cash in…
Letters to the Editor
An insider’s observations: Just a quick note to thank you for including me in your recent “March Blandness” bracket of local columnists [March 19]. It was very amusing, and I appreciate the mention. Thanks for reading my column. By the way, I’m very much looking forward to your next story on the amazing athletic exploits…
Evan Dando
With a face as pretty as his songs, former Lemonheads frontman Evan Dando earned a reputation as the Mazda Miata of rock: sexy and utterly lightweight. Seven years after the Lemonheads ended with a whimper, Dando’s long-awaited solo debut, Baby I’m Bored, forces a reappraisal: It makes you want to dig out your copy of…
Denali
Denali specializes in atmosphere that occupies the middle ground between benign and unsettling. On the Virginia band’s self-titled debut, released last year on the Jade Tree imprint, guitarist Cam DiNunzio, bassist Keeley Davis, and drummer Jonathan Fuller provide dramatic backdrops against which singer/multi-instrumentalist Maura Davis pitches her thin but evocative voice. Because she’s equally adept…
Wow, Canada!
Sure, Canadians are responsible for Celine Dion, Jim Carrey, and hockey, but they’ve also given us some of the best animation of the past 15 years. While the U.S. wastes ink on Treasure Planet and The Prince of Egypt, our northern neighbors have been making animated films that people actually want to see. Animania 2003!,…
Vital Remains
Why is Deicide growler Glen Benton fronting this band? If Vital Remains wanted to bring in a “superstar” guest vocalist, why not pick one with a more distinctive voice? Vocal gripes aside, though, Dechristianize, Vital Remains’ fifth album, is solid death metal. The hour-long disc has all the necessary speed, power, and quality riffs, as…
This Week’s Day-by-Day Picks
Thursday, April 17 Reverend Albert Wagner was nearly 50 when he started pursuing his other life’s calling. Almost 30 years later, Wagner’s East Cleveland home is filled with thousands of cryptic paintings and drawings, and his most recent work is now on display at Dead Horse Gallery. The best of them — like “Itsy Bitsy…
Adult
Detroit’s Adult — Nicoloa Kuperus and Adam Lee Miller — has been plying its driving synth rock for six years. The duo’s determination has been rewarded: The zeitgeist finally has come around to welcoming Adult’s chilly evocations of post-industrial electro, for which its hometown provides the ideal backdrop. Kuperus’s detached monotone is an understandable reaction…
Gettin’ Gamey
Historically speaking, game shows aren’t very funny. They want to be, but they’re not. Bonk is funny. Then again, funny is Bonk’s sole purpose. “It’s a parody,” says Kerry Pollock, the fast-talking, red-blazer-wearing host and the brains behind Bonk. “My plan is to have this be a comedy show, with the game show [element] as…
Wire
A number of old-guard Brit punks (Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks, Damned) have all followed a similar career pattern: the groundbreaking glory days, later attempts to stay relevant (i.e., adding dance beats), a few years off, and the inevitable “return to their classic sound.” Wire, having inflicted an irreparable fracture on the basic Brit-punk sound with its…
Uncool as Ice
Can’t we please, for the love of God, declare a moratorium on the use of Wild Cherry’s “Play That Funky Music” on the soundtrack of any and all movies? At the very least, if the plot of the movie in question features an uncool white guy who undergoes a quest for respect, let’s use the…
Cobra Verde
Since 1994, acerbic Cobra Verde frontman John Petkovic has been Cleveland’s best argument for classic 1970s rock and roll, when the music overflowed with panache, witty lyrics, soaring backing vocals, and hooks you could memorize after one listen. Easy Listening, Cobra Verde’s third proper album, invests glam rock with Rust Belt oomph. While 1999’s Nightlife…
Digging for Treasure
The Harry Potter phenomenon — on the page, in the movies, at the bank — has aroused in publishers and studio heads alike a sudden new appreciation of our children’s needs. These people understand that no consumer is more motivated than a kid in the grip of a craze, so every last one of them…
Viva Caramel
“Do you even know why you still love rock and roll?” Viva Caramel singer-guitarist Brian Strazek asks on his band’s eponymous debut. For those who may have forgotten, Viva Caramel provides a dozen reminders. With two vocalists, touches of trumpet, trombone, and sax, and a cover that features baboons in tube socks, Viva Caramel teems…
Chow Time
Bulletproof Monk may not be high art, but at least it has the distinction of being the first Hollywood production that gives an inkling of why Chow Yun-Fat became Hong Kong’s greatest leading man some 17 years ago, after his irresistible supporting performance in John Woo’s breakthrough A Better Tomorrow. Chow’s American career has been…
Rebirth of Cool
“‘Cool’ audiences are boring,” announces Hot Hot Heat drummer Paul Hawley, a man who should know. His heavily hyped band is at the front of the “new” new- wave revival, and in the past year, has landed both a major-label deal and big-time management. Despite all this, Hawley and company are still getting used to…
The French Conniption
Imagine a large, dead Saint Bernard with its bones removed. Then visualize a hefty bellows inserted into it from behind, with a gorilla hopping up and down on it, causing the huge dog’s baglike corpse to twitch spasmodically, wheeze, and croak. Voilà, this is today’s Nick Nolte. What’s amazing is that, even though he makes…
Back to the Front
The European press says Metallica’s forthcoming St. Anger is a holy terror: The album could mark the return to form headbangers have waited more than a decade for. After the middling Load/Re-Load albums and the downright awful S&M, Metallica’s at a crossroads: One more disc of watered-down hard rock, and its metal-god legacy could be…
West Assured
One of the delusional yet empowering parts of growing up is that we each think we discovered sex all by ourselves. We’re messing around with frogs or Barbies, and then all of a sudden, wham!, we’re up to our eyeballs in lust. After that, we’re on the prowl for anything sexual, and we eventually hear…
Rock of (All) Ages
Underage concertgoers always get the shaft at rock clubs, which is what makes the Shelter such a promising alternative. Beginning in early May, the new nightspot on the Cleveland-Old Brooklyn border will host concerts in a booze-free, all-ages environment, with no extra charge for those under 21 and no shows that will stretch past midnight…
Mystery, Murdered
We all love a good mystery, because our lives are, essentially, nothing more than a series of daily mysteries. For instance, a current puzzler is Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s recent statement that the chaotic looting throughout Iraq was understandable, since that country is now free and “freedom means people are able to commit mistakes…
Daniel Johnston
Even if you’ve never heard of Daniel Johnston, you’ve probably heard his songs. Take “Speeding Motorcycle,” which has been indelibly covered by the Pastels and Yo La Tengo; Mary Lou Lord’s version hyped Target on TV. Not bad work for a track recorded on a $59 tape machine by a guy who, shortly after writing…
The Gulf Between
A few things learned from the memoirs of Marines who served in Gulf War I: They’re more terrified of being killed by friendly fire than enemy artillery; they’re bored brainless most of the time; they harbor fantasies of being shot, but never somewhere too painful or where it might inflict permanent damage (a shoulder, say,…
Dan Bern
Dan Bern is the most engaging Jewish troubadour to come out of a small Midwestern town since someone named Zimmerman emerged from Hibbing, Minnesota, in ’61. Okay, that list is mighty short, and perhaps it would be unfair to lump anyone in with Bob Dylan. But Bern, raised by immigrant parents in Mount Vernon, Iowa,…
Public Domain
Not much is left of Old Downtown’s elegance, style, and spirit. And what remains can be glimpsed only in circumscribed spaces — inside the gilt and glass of the renovated Arcade, beneath the ornate ceilings in the lobby of the Terminal Tower. But Higbee’s, the May Company, and other grand stores of their ilk are…
Lose Your Memory Festival
A week after the Tri-C Jazz Fest shined a light on some of the biggest and best jazz musicians from across the country, the Lose Your Memory Festival is here to illuminate the underground. Put together by the avant-jazz troupe Birth, a forward-thinking trio made up of native Clevelanders, the two-day event promises to be…
Midnight at the Velvet Tango Room
This is the nightclub that doesn’t need you. There are no billboards bearing its name along I-77. No ads in Cleveland magazine. No West 6th Street kiosks listing happy-hour specials. The Yellow Pages carries a phone number, but no address. It’s in a nondescript building that blends into its ramshackle West Side neighborhood. Yet on…
Whirly Gigs
The Party of Helicopters perk up when old Metallica and new 50 Cent come through on the jukebox, but what really gets them going is Harriet the Spy, a defunct Kent group that once found some acclaim in national indie circles. “People won’t get them for years,” says bassist Ryan Brannon, sipping a beer at…
50 Cent
The brazen multiethnic hip-hop crew Egotrip summarizes the gangsta-rap phenomenon with this haiku from its Big Book of Racism: “Fuck that nigga dead/Fuck them niggaz, kill niggaz/Our first gold record.” There are few iced-out thugs who have much to say about narcotics and firearms that wasn’t said better by N.W.A. or Notorious B.I.G., but the…
Just for Her
When screening candidates to test a new pill, MetroHealth nurse Paula Malbon asks the Tom Cruise question. She is looking for women who have lost interest in sex — not women who have lost interest in slobby husbands. So she asks them if making love with the handsome movie star sounds just as unappealing as…
A Class All His Own
Most of us don’t spend a lot of time hanging out at Liz and Michael Symon’s house — and if you do, mad props to you. But even if you’re not a member of the Lola owners’ inner circle, you can be part of the next best thing by signing up for one of Michael…
B.B. King
It’s virtually impossible to overstate B.B. King’s influence on the blues. As Charlie Parker and John Coltrane altered the path of jazz saxophone for contemporaries and future players alike, B.B.’s guitar and vocals generated imitators from the start of his phenomenal career and have marked almost every blues performer since. For those who could cut…
Death of a Daycare
Child Magazine recently named Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital the No. 3 pediatric hospital in America. U.S. News and World Report lists Rainbow as the No. 1 children’s hospital in the Midwest. But some employees complain that its parent organization, University Hospitals, doesn’t care as much about the children of its workers as it does…
Youth Gone Mild
Good Charlotte is the punk band named after a kids’ book. Its young fans only know Black Flag as something that kills roaches. So it’s no wonder critics dismiss Good Charlotte’s anthemic pop as child’s play. In a number of ways, it is. “This song is dedicated to every kid who got picked last in…
Idlewild
On Idlewild’s third record, The Remote Part, plucky vocalist Roddy Woomble is the Muhammad Ali of Britpop, crooning like a butterfly and rasping like a punk-stung bee. Although such a dichotomy is nothing new for the Scottish quintet, who constructed literate homages to Hüsker Dü, the Smiths, and Ash on 2000’s cult favorite 100 Broken…
