Letters to the Editor
Flip-flops and foibles of Dennis Kucinich: What’s this [“Hollow Man,” March 19]? A “progressive” paper actually had the balls to tell the truth about Cleveland’s favorite son? Kudos to David Martin for stating the facts: It was never about Cleveland Municipal Power or St. Michael’s Hospital or LTV. It was about one weird little boy’s…
Sounds From the Underground
Toxic Shock truly is Cleveland’s most underground club: Located in the basement of a house tucked in a rural Olmsted Falls neighborhood, the new BYOB venue could pass for a bomb shelter (bonus!), but so far it’s just a good place to get bombed on the cheap with some of the area’s best under-the-radar bands.…
Psychic Babble
Jennifer Triton doesn’t perform magic. She can’t bring your ancestors back from the grave. And if someone calls her “God” one more time, she’s going to scream. But that doesn’t stop the 28-year-old Lakewood astrologer from holding court at monthly Psychic Nights at the Mudhouse coffee shop, where she also works behind the counter. For…
Greg Osby Four
Since 1984, when he hooked up with Steve Coleman to form the M-BASE Collective, alto saxophonist Greg Osby has been at the forefront of some of the more exploratory movements of the modern jazz era. While always on the cutting edge of current trends, Osby seems to be coming into his own these days, as…
This Week’s Day-by-Day Picks
Thursday, April 3 NPR’s weekly quiz program Wait Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me is filled with trivial information both enlightening (British spies were encouraged to sneak into German brothels and put itching powder in condoms during World War II) and frivolous (Elvis offered to help President Nixon track down drug users). There’ll be…
The Aislers Set
Femme-friendly rock received a much-needed injection of lo-fi synchronicity, once members of underground faves Track Star, Scenic Vermont, Henry’s Dress, and the Poundsign#s converged to form the Aislers Set. Haunted by Amy Linton’s wispy, faraway vocals, the Bay Area band applies Wall of Sound-worthy production to indie rock’s homemade charms. The group’s third album, How…
Indians’ Summer?
It’s safe to say that the Indians’ Era of Champions is over. But don’t lose heart just yet. While the Tribe may not be highly regarded by Sports Illustrated or ESPN’s Peter Gammons, we tracked down a couple of guys who do have encouraging words for them. Sort of. “Not shitty,” assesses Keith Uchima, a…
Songwriters in the Round
When Florence Dore was eight years old, her mother pulled her out of her third-grade class at a Catholic school in Nashville to go catch a set from Johnny Cash at Opryland. Two decades and some change later, Dore no longer has to play hooky to indulge her love of rough-and-tumble Americana. Instead, she’s turned…
Make My Daze
Stop me if you’ve heard this one: A hard-bitten lawman manages to take down a vicious drug kingpin. The vanquished crook (of course Latino) vows revenge as he’s taken away. The lawman smiles, goes back to his normal life, and then the bad guys kill his wife! The lawman goes after the bad guy, but…
Leftover Salmon
Ever seen someone jam on a water phone or an electric banjo made from a tree stump? Expect such curiosities when Leftover Salmon hits the Odeon this week, for this weed-lovin’ troupe isn’t just another bluegrass outfit. In 1989, Vince Herman of the Salmon Heads, a Cajun-calypso jug band, hooked up with progressive bluegrassers Drew…
Wangled Angles
While admitting to being neither a giddy young girl nor a particularly stupid adult, this critic shall review What a Girl Wants as objectively as possible. Accidental love-child Daphne Reynolds (Amanda Bynes) has spent her 17 years thus far as a native New Yorker, holed up in Chinatown with her bohemian musician mother, Libby (Kelly…
Terence Blanchard
In the weeks that followed September 11, Hollywood filmmakers decided that images of a pre- or post-September 11 New York would be too much for audiences to bear. But quintessential New Yorker Spike Lee was one of the first directors to address the city’s wounded spirit with his film 25th Hour. To help complete his…
Wrong Number
A man, peering through the scope of a sniper’s rifle muffled by a silencer, holds hostage someone he considers an evildoer. They communicate via telephone: The sniper insists that if his prey disconnects for any reason, he will shoot to kill. To prove he is serious, and not merely a lunatic who dialed the wrong…
Jesse Malin
With his black leather jacket, ink-jet mop top, and disenfranchised brooding, New York singer-songwriter Jesse Malin still looks like a reject from the Strokes’ casting call. Musically, however, the former D Generation frontman has abandoned his former outfit’s frenetic glam-slamming in favor of Wilco-flavored Americana. Ryan Adams, the genre’s official poster child, lends a hand…
Her Show of Shows
It’s hard to explain why Christine Hill’s work is considered art without digressing into arcane art theory. But here’s the official short version, from a brochure for Hill’s new show: “She has dedicated her life and her art to becoming one and the same.” Hence, everything the 34-year-old New Yorker does, buys, makes, or uses…
Ms. Dynamite
This debut from London MC and singer Ms. Dynamite provides a solid snapshot of what’s next in urban music, outlining what’s both stylistically and emotionally possible in humanistic, female-centered hip-hop-soul. The album breaks out with a force that evokes Queen Latifah’s All Hail the Queen and Lauryn Hill’s The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. As an…
Dragging Bottoms
Imagine, if you’re able, a high-end drag nightclub in France owned and operated by Attorney General John Ashcroft. First of all, he’d allow no wussy French words or accents. (Even backstage signs are written in English. To hell with French drag; let’s call it freedom drag!) He’d make the girly-boys’ costumes dowdy and sad. And…
Aphex Twin
Assembling a retrospective of Aphex Twin’s decade-plus remix work on two discs is like slapping a painting each from Picasso’s Pink, Blue, and Cubist periods into one book and assuming it’s cohesive enough to make sense. Richard D. James (Aphex) has gone through at least as many stylistic phases as Picasso, but what makes things…
Bare Market
Okay, a bunch of average blue-collar slobs get the bright idea that they can earn 50 grand in a single night if they strip butt naked and charge a thousand women $50 each for the privilege of watching them prance around. Go ask the average woman if she’d pay that much to see the man…
Linkin Park
Three and a half decades after Jethro Tull’s emergence, Linkin Park has brought the flute back to hard rock. This probably won’t help their rep as the band that neutered nü-metal, but it does enliven a genre that was left for dead in 2002, thanks to bombs by Korn and Papa Roach. But where those…
A Grand Guy
March 21, 2003–though he never knew the precise date, it was the very day Nile Southern had been waiting for longer than he cared to remember. On that day, Southern went into the Chelsea Mini-Storage facility on Manhattan’s West Side, grabbed the largest dolly he could find–it looked like a small boat with wheels–and began…
Zeke
Led by singer Marky Feltchtone’s insane, bug-eyed staccato count-offs at the start of every other song, Zeke became one of the best speed-punk bands of the ’90s. With a sound fueled by model glue, heroin, and plenty of Slayer and Ramones concerts, Zeke was too messy for metal, too leather-vested for hardcore. As a result,…
History on Tap
Centuries before Willoughby’s natural landscape disappeared beneath a tattered gray blanket of car lots, drive-thrus, and video stores, the high bluffs overlooking the Chagrin River were home to a tribe of Erie Indians. A more or less peaceful lot, the Eries prospered here, right up until the day they were abruptly dispatched by the Iroquois,…
Marduk
Marduk wants listeners to believe that it’s the most vicious, misanthropic, gleefully evil band on the planet. The troupe’s lyrics and satanic/Nazi imagery conjure memories of the storm-troopin’ demons from An American Werewolf in London — though they’re actually a bunch of Scandinavian dudes with silly white face-paint and beerguts poking out from leather vests…
The Boob Scotch Tour
Bob Log III is a one-man blues explosion who specializes in raucous Delta twang played through cheesy pawn-shop amps. He filters this devil’s music through a primitive rock sensibility and accompanies it by singing into a telephone receiver affixed to a motorcycle helmet, which he always wears with the visor down. Log completes this ensemble…
At Wit’s End
Metalcore would be one genre that takes itself too damn seriously. Which is what makes Platinum, the debut from At Wit’s End, such a welcome break from the norm. It comes complete with the requisite machine-gun riffing and larynx-mincing screams, but its mayhem is underlain with a wry sense of humor that manifests itself in…
We Have a Winner!
While war raged in Iraq, a fiercer and far more important battle stormed closer to home: Who would win Scene’s March Blandness tournament and be named the worst columnist in Northeast Ohio? Over the past two weeks, Punch’s e-mail has been bloodied by nominations. There was hearty support for The PD’s Regina Brett (“nausea-inducing diatribes…
Scratch in the U.S.S.R.
“Listening to music while stoned is a whole new world . . . Grass will change your musical habits for the better,” intones a voice on “Till Suns in Your Eyes,” the opening track on DJ Vadim’s latest album, U.S.S.R.: The Art of Listening. Ironically, though Vadim thinks drugs have been crucial to many musical…
Jann Klose
Jann Klose’s vocal range covers almost as much ground as Klose has himself. A native of Hamburg who has also lived in Kenya, Klose whetted his appetite for music at age 16, when he came to Cleveland as a foreign-exchange student. After finishing his studies in Germany, he returned to Ohio to launch his music…
Race for the Prize
A year ago, Athersys stood for Ohio pride. Governor Bob Taft invited the biopharmaceutical company’s chief executive, Gil Van Bokkelen, to his 2002 State of the State address. Taft wanted a real, live Third Frontiersman on hand as he introduced his $1.6 billion initiative to boost research and technology endeavors. Athersys, Taft noted, held two…
Bang the Drum Differently
The world thrives on order and categorization. Single or married, Democrat or Republican, each of us is pigeonholed into general and more specific categories, and music is certainly no different. The antithesis of this impulse to compartmentalize is embodied by jazz drummer Matt Wilson — a dexterous, multifaceted player who has established himself not only…
Soul of the Brute
Abe Javadi has yet to enter the cage, but he has already made his first mistake. The lanky 20-year-old has braided his long brown hair instead of shaving it off. It’s a small concession to vanity, but as anyone who’s seen ultimate fighting can testify, he might as well have installed a handle on his…
The People’s Party
Few genres are as intimidating to newcomers as electronic music. It’s a scene that births new subgenres (acid house, broken beat, two-step, garage) at a rabbit’s pace, and one in which pointy heads will ridicule you for not grasping the finer points of Intelligent Dance Music, which sounds remarkably like a toaster on the fritz.…
