A Brighter Shade of Scumbag
There’s a comedic moment in the police interview last year of developer and former American National Bank board chairman Bucky Kopf. He had confessed to bribing Avon Lake Mayor Vince Urbin, and police and prosecutors were pressuring him to admit the $2,000 in cash he gave Urbin was meant to buy influence. Kopf protests: “People…
Gold Circles
Post-rock has become the musical equivalent of saltpeter. Emasculating to a fault, the genre sits with its legs crossed. Call it Will and Grace-rock. It’s not like we wish that the rock landscape were overrun with dudes in puke-stained Slayer gear who open beer cans with their teeth. But in the midst of the current…
The System’s Working
Keep the color out of politics: I am compelled to offer a “reality check” after reading Eunice Jones’s letter in the March 14 issue [Jones’s letter was in response to “Winner Takes All Brawl,” January 31]. Peter Lawson Jones is the Cuyahoga County commissioner because he received more votes than Pat O’Malley. O’Malley has since…
Imperial Teen
When last we left Imperial Teen, San Francisco’s premier power-pop quartet was walking the plank off a corporate-controlled label and receding into memory on the sails of a dull sophomore effort. For anyone who thought only Fountains of Wayne made a grander, more acerbic guitar-pop album in mid-’90s America than the Teen’s debut Seasick, standing…
The Invisible Artist
It’s hard to imagine life sans creature comforts, but the rugs, blankets, and other artifacts on display in Woven Treasures: Tribal Textiles From Western and Central Asia offer a glimpse into how to survive without Big Box Mart. The exhibition, at Oberlin College’s Allen Memorial Art Museum, looks at the lives of nomadic tribes in…
Do Look Back
On a Friday night in March, it was hard to tell where to look: at the flickering movie screen, where The Band was wrapping up a 16-year career with a farewell concert, or at a still Robbie Robertson, who was sitting in the audience at the Paramount Theater in Austin and watching his younger self…
The Outer Space Place
On the day that the Enterprise finally lands in Lakewood, Spock, Bones, and Captain Kirk will beam themselves directly to the bar at Capsule. Resting their elbows on the stark white countertop, the space travelers will order drinks — a Green Martian Martini, probably, with Midori and vodka — and gaze wearily into the colorful…
Live, From Chicago
Vivo, Cleveland native Dan Krasny’s 11-year-old, ultra-hip Italian restaurant in Chicago, will soon have an outpost in the recently renovated Arcade. Krasny had been hoping to do business in his hometown for some time, says his director of operations, Wade Starr, and those plans jelled when Cleveland chef (and Chicago native) Todd Stein was tapped…
Blockbuster Beats
When the Delta Heavy tour’s two buses and semi trailer pull up to the Agora, the first thing unloaded will be the speakers. Lots of speakers. Next comes the lighting — everything from everyday spotlights to elaborate laser rigs worth more than your mortgage. After that come the video projectors, along with a couple of…
Uncanny X-Man
While waiting for the day the turntable would finally be acknowledged as a true musical instrument, hip-hop DJs, feeling they weren’t receiving their due as artists, coined the title “turntablist.” More than just a marketing ploy, it was a job description, placing the emphasis solely on hands manipulating vinyl. DJ battalions like the Invisibl Skratch…
Big-Game Players
Bands trying to gain national exposure face barriers higher than J. Lo must have been when she sported that Pomeranian ‘do at the Grammys. Getting airplay has become so cost-prohibitive, only major labels can cough up the $100,000-plus in legal payola it takes to break into rotation on a commercial station. Video outlets like MTV,…
Mobbed to Death
It’s an offer pundits can’t refuse: beating a dead horse’s head over media portrayals of Italian Americans. The Mafia was big entertainment in 1972, when Francis Ford Coppola made The Godfather, and it’s still big entertainment today, thanks to HBO’s The Sopranos. But the return of the mobster is not sitting well with some –…
Benefit for Pete DiRienzo.
From the Rolling Stones’ whiskey-soaked revelry to Sleater-Kinney’s open-armed embrace of punk whimsy, the best rock and roll has always celebrated being alive. Maybe that’s why, whenever tragedy strikes at a rock show — from the Stones’ nightmare at Altamont to Pearl Jam’s calamitous set at Roskilde two years ago — it seems to resonate…
The Little Jazz Man
At 76, Jimmy Scott still cares about the music. Other folks his age worry about getting a good booth at the early-bird buffet; Scott scans lists of songs written by the 20th century’s greatest tunesmiths — Duke Ellington, James Van Heusen, Johnny Mercer — to record and sing onstage. Scott, a Cleveland native and resident,…
Iced Earth
There’s the underground, and then there’s the underground. Black/death bands have achieved vanguard status in modern metal. Because of their radical symbolism and rhetoric (burning churches and the like) and because of their eternal faster-harder-lower-noisier arms race, they’re seen as the future, not a potential dead end. Traditional “power” metal, meanwhile, languishes under a virtual…
Rock in Role
Say this about World Wrestling Federation Entertainment head honcho Vince McMahon: He knows what his fans want. Few movies have ever been as specifically tailored to an existing audience as The Scorpion King, in which McMahon’s prize champion, The Rock, portrays The Rock wearing a loincloth and going by the name of Mathayus. McMahon executive-produced,…
Garbage
We want to love Shirley Manson. We want Shirley Manson to love us. Because if she doesn’t, she’d probably try to kill us, which would complicate our attempts to love her. It helps when she doesn’t make crappy albums. There’s a good reason you’ve heard and read little about Beautiful Garbage, Garbage’s much-anticipated third release:…
Bloody Nothing
The perpetrators of the new Sandra Bullock vehicle Murder by Numbers could be hauled in on any number of charges, including plagiarism and child abuse. But their most obvious crime is first-degree dullness, giving us a thriller without thrills and a mystery devoid of urgent questions. This merely bloody piece of business spends two long,…
David Dondero
For yet another example of a perfectly good word losing its meaning to common usage, consider “troubadour.” The way it gets used nowadays, you’d think any old sensitive-type coffeehouse folkie qualified, particularly if he or she writes songs about, you know, people. And things. David Dondero, on the other hand, is all but a walking,…
Blood & Justice
Outside the weathered Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court building, the sky is clear and bright. A glorious morning teases with the promise of summer and sweet escape from winter’s fickle ways. But inside, the light seems filtered through a brown paper bag, the air smells of old carpet and bad cologne, and the laws of space…
Cornershop
Nearly five years after the release of the vaunted When I Was Born for the Seventh Time, Cornershop has returned with another clever, kaleidoscopic, and ultimately unsatisfying album. What ails Handcream for a Generation is no easy call, however, given that there’s so much there — musically, lyrically, conceptually — to recommend it. On Handcream,…
Dead White Men Society
On November 1, 1996, presidential candidate Bob Dole began his final, 96-hour campaign drive in Ashland. A small college town might have seemed an unlikely place for Dole to commence his campaign-a-thon, but Ashland made sense for a couple of reasons. One, no one since John Kennedy has won the presidency without winning Ohio. Two,…
Primus
Rising out of the San Francisco alt-rock scene of the late ’80s, the peculiar metal-funk trio Primus became one of the most unlikely successes of MTV’s second generation. Bassist extraordinaire Les Claypool, drummer Tim “Herb” Alexander, and guitarist Larry LaLonde penned goofy, blue-collar metal ballads whose bizarreness nearly outmatched the group’s musical prowess. Primus sired…
Tension in the Heir
Nearly every one of its CEOs has left under clouds of scandal or mismanagement. So one might expect the Cuyahoga County Community Mental Health Board to welcome outside input as it chooses its next CEO. Especially when that input comes from county commissioners and the Ohio Department of Mental Health — the two forces controlling…
Q-Tip
Q-Tip’s solo debut, the chart-topping Amplified, transformed the former Tribe Called Quest frontman from a pillar of soulful, Afrocentric consciousness into a purveyor of Puffy-esque misogynistic nonsense. If Amplified’s flavor-of-the-month, jiggafied beats and racy lyrics shocked longtime Tribe fans, Kamaal the Abstract will do the same for completely different reasons. Q-Tip’s musical hero is Miles…
