He Says, She Said
4/23-5/16 The Last Five Years is not as straightforward as the title suggests. Jason Robert Brown’s play, which makes its Ohio premiere at Dobama Friday, documents the story of a young novelist and a budding actress who meet, fall in love, marry, and separate. His story plays out forward, hers rolls backward; the couple shares…
Savath & Savalas
After a long winter here, it’s easy to be skeptical that there are places on Earth that aren’t dismal and dreary as Cleveland, but listening to Savath & Savalas suggests otherwise. Apropa’t, the group’s new album, hits like a long, slow sea breeze, bringing the sun, sand, and Corona with it. S&S began as a…
Big Deal
I am going to give 13 Going on 30 too much credit, though it’s hardly worth the effort; Lord knows, the filmmakers didn’t put much into it. It’s a shame, as far as these things go, because what could have been an engaging, maybe even enlightening story about the unfairly high price a woman pays…
Leon Russell
About the only mystery surrounding the most recent Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony is why the top-hatted and silver-maned Leon Russell still hasn’t been welcomed. After all, since lying about his age to land a gig in a Tulsa bar 50 years ago, the Oklahoma native has toiled as frontman, sideman, and…
Lenin Grads
If you were a college-aged East Berliner in October of 1989, chances are that your time was occupied by things like protesting or hacking at the Berlin Wall. Perhaps you caroused or lit fireworks or sang with joy in the newly open streets. Whatever you were doing, it was probably celebratory — because who would…
Damien Rice
Damien Rice may be the feel-baddest balladeer to find a wide audience since Volkswagen revived Nick Drake. Like his countryman David Gray, Rice specializes in putting the cold, wet feeling of Irish winter onto two-inch tape and has a similar, if more astringent, vocal style. But Rice’s music is a stranger brew — at times,…
Rockin’ Messiah
Oh, how far we’ve come from the Age of Aquarius and the Summer of Love. Back in the late 1960s and early ’70s, hippies were happily stuffing daisies into the muzzles of national guard firearms, young people pleaded, “Make love, not war,” and Jesus Christ Superstar hit Broadway with a gauzy, emotional, rock-concert version of…
Deerhoof
Deerhoof singer Satomi Matsuzaki’s ultra-high voice sounds something like what would come out of Wayne Coyne’s mouth if he weren’t a man. She is by turns Nico-cold and Hello Kitty-naive, and her lyrics sound like bizarre, lost-in-translation haiku. The experimental Bay Area band’s repetitive song fragments appear held together with aural Scotch tape: Stream-of-consciousness playing…
Shuck & Jive
When it comes to interesting historical curiosities, it’s hard to beat your basic freak show. Events featuring bearded ladies, strong men, and midgets sold lots of tickets in old-time traveling carnivals; citizens loved to gawk at odd-looking human beings without actually having to travel to Mississippi. But the sideshow in Toni K. Thayer’s play Ten…
Mary J. Blige
Since she debuted a dozen years ago, Mary J. Blige has come to be known as the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul. Any number of pretenders to that throne have emerged in the interim, yet no one has wrested the crown away from the original, whose What’s the 411 created a dominant musical template that we…
Celluloid Zeroes
All’s quiet in Screening Room 10, as Welcome to Mooseport is readied for launch. It’s Tuesday night at Tower City Cinemas, a time when parties of one often get entire theaters to themselves. Within moments, the serenity of the preview trailers is unceremoniously shattered by the arrival of 30 sketchy characters who shuffle in noisily,…
On Stage
Agnes of God — The existence of even a single Indians fan would seem to indicate that blind faith in miracles is alive and well in our world. But things become more complex with the spiritual issues of birth, death, parenthood, and the reason for our existence — the weighty matters behind this play by…
Ghostface
The gritty, woozy sound that defined the Wu-Tang Clan’s mid-’90s dominance still pounds in the eardrums of the Hip-Hop Nation. It’s the reason Ghostface Killah’s last album, 2001’s pop-friendly Bulletproof Wallets, was so poorly received by the street that it “went wood.” And it’s why his new single, “Run” — a chase through siren-screaming streets,…
Missing in Action
Inside Richard-Carla for Hair, a University Heights salon, the estrogen is pumping and the conversation is jumping. This is a very serious matter. We’re not talking about highlighting. “Nature is cruel,” says Maria, a curvy, 33-year-old stylist. (Her name, like many in this story, has been changed to protect her sex life.) “Out of an…
On View
Aging in America, The Years Ahead — Being old doesn’t necessarily mean living on the fringes of society, as this multimedia show proves. Ed Kashi’s black-and-white photographs demonstrate, for example, that the Marlboro Man has nothing on the 75-year-old cowboys competing at the National Senior Pro Rodeo. A leather-jacketed senior biker chick gives meaning to…
Neil Hamburger
“Why are M&Ms filled with chocolate? . . . Because it would be illegal to fill them with shit.” If that line busts your gut, bring a suture and some gauze, because Neil Hamburger cuts with just such zingers. Hamburger tries on a different comedy coat for each of his records, like his “dirty” humor…
A Scheme Unravels
Kathleen Wynne really, really cares about elections. Three months ago, she quit her job as a legal secretary to fight full-time for computerized voting machines that provide voters with ballot receipts. “Nobody would use a bank ATM that didn’t give you a receipt,” says Wynne, who has organized educational events and aggressively courted the media…
Tastes Like Home
We wouldn’t be at all surprised if Ricardo Salerno’s face aches when he gets home at night. As host, maître d’, and musical entertainment at his Little Italy restaurant, Gusto, the guy just never stops smiling. Like his smart black suits, his jaunty mustache, and the shiny accordion that he straps across his chest at…
Black Sabbath
Black Sabbath was, to an entire generation, what the Beatles were to their older brothers and sisters. The Beatles demonstrated the creative autonomy available to a pop group in the burgeoning 1960s youth consumer culture. Black Sabbath, on the other hand, sifted the post-1968 wreckage of that culture. The revolution hadn’t come, the Man wasn’t…
Chasing Venus
Chasing Venus Great mental image: James Renner’s “Strangers in the Night” [March 31] was sufficiently provocative to snag and hold a skeptic’s undivided attention. Indeed, despite the lapse of a quarter-century, the thought of Portage County cops chasing a flying saucer into Pennsylvania seems to overflow with canard, glamour, and extravaganza. As with quaint legends…
The Dance of Love
It’s no substitute for that rehab program you so desperately need, but at least the next time you eat too much, drink too much, and stay out w-a-a-y too late, you can savor the small satisfaction of blaming it on Bossa Nova, the stunning new lounge opening in Woodmere in early May. Chances are, you’ll…
James Carter
You won’t find saxophonist James Carter on the roster at Atlantic Records, where he made some of his best recordings — including his audacious 2000 pairing, Layin’ in the Cut/Chasin’ the Gypsy. You also won’t find him on Warner Bros. anymore, as he’s now signed to Columbia. So it might behoove you to find this…
Econ 101
You can’t help but root for Sam McNulty. He launched his first business as a student at Cleveland State. A basement space in the University Center had been home to a series of failed restaurants. McNulty thought he could do better. He didn’t actually have any food experience, mind you, but he owns a quality…
Heavy Voting Zoo
Fat Mike would like to apologize for the whole Bush-Florida thing. His bad. “After the 2000 elections, I was very unsatisfied, and I felt that if I had spoken out to my fan base more and tried to tell them how I felt politically, it might have made a difference, especially because NOFX has sold…
New Planet Trampoline/The Volta Sound
Despite the heavy eyes, slumped shoulders, and feet on the coffee table implied by a dozen or so ’60s-minded rockers dubbing themselves the Davenport Collective, the Cleveland multi-instrumentalists never really kick back for long. The four-band enclave has issued half a dozen albums in the past year alone, and they’re even more active now that…
Home Run
After eight years, veteran runner Matt Fyffe became bored with the Rite Aid Cleveland Marathon & 10K course: Start with the first five miles downtown, head west into Lakewood and Rocky River, turn around in Bay Village, and make it to the finish line near Cleveland State University. Yawn. This year, the 26.2-mile race has…
Rockabilly Grandma
Wanda Jackson covers a telling old Carl Perkins anthem on her latest album, Heart Trouble. Bopping along on a chugging rhythm and fueled by a twangy electric-guitar lead, the song sounds as if it’s meant to be seminal. Naturally, the tune is called “Rockabilly Fever,” and Jackson sings it with understated conviction: “Rockabilly fever/Looks like…
This Week’s Day-By-Day Picks
Thursday, April 22 It was only a matter of time before the extreme craze infiltrated something girly like flower displays. Extreme Arranging, happening through Sunday at the Cleveland Botanical Garden, takes the typically tranquil task of mixing and matching foliage and pumps it up. “Master arrangers” show people how to twist, turn, and present plants…
Morgue for Your Money
“We don’t have tattoos on our necks. We don’t write songs about feelings and stuff. And we certainly don’t scream enough. We’re probably going to get eaten alive.” Such were the recollections of Matt Armstrong, the scared-shitless bassist for the Bloomington, Indiana quintet Murder by Death. That was two years ago, when his band was…
Time to Kill
Ben Coccio wanted to make a movie that fused the you-are-there style of The Blair Witch Project with the all-too-real horror of the Columbine killings. Zero Day, his first feature, puts a video camera in the hands of a pair of high-school loners, Cal and Andre, and follows their “army of two” assault on their…
Hung — and Well
Take it from us, the Steve Guttenberg of rock journalists: Talent is overrated. Maybe that’s why we dig William Hung so much. The bite-sized American Idol flunky has no discernible musical aptitude, just an off-key stammer that sputters like a car running out of gas. Yet he’s looking down on Courtney Love’s sorry ass on…
Poetry in Commotion
FRI 4/23 After Michael T. and Marcel DeJure put out a call for obscure and absurd music videos, the creators of the annual 20,000 Leagues Under the Industry Film Festival didn’t have to wait long for a deluge of entries for their new Videokronik. The four-hour fest features more than 60 music videos — including…
Moneen
Moneen, a spunky Canadian quartet on its first headlining tour of the U.S., isn’t really the rabble-rousing type — except when it comes to the music. With deconstructive tune titles like “With This Song I Will Destroy Myself” and “To Say Something That Means Nothing to Anyone at All,” the band’s second disc, Are We…
Field Promotion
SAT 4/24 The Cleveland Fusion, of the National Women’s Football Association, attracted increasingly large crowds to its games at Bedford High School over the past two seasons. To kick off its third year, the players wanted to show off their skills to both local sports fans and NFL hotshots, so the team arranged to play…
Fistful of Fests
Nestled halfway between downtown and Route 77 on Akron’s endless West Market Street, Annabell’s Lounge might be the coolest little dive you’ve never been to. In a basement room beneath the neighborhood bar, quality off-the-Cleveland-radar bands play every weekend night, usually for free. In the coming weeks, Annabell’s will host a pair of promising festivals:…
Five for Fun
4/24-4/25 As one of Hi-5’s quintet of hosts (seen on the Learning Channel and Discovery Kids networks), Karla Cheatham-Mosley pushes her young fans’ “brain buttons” to hop, skip, and jump to better fitness. “Especially in urban centers, there’s this huge thing to talk about calorie counting at five years old,” says Cheatham-Mosley, who’s on a…
H.I.M.
Most metal bands play as if every gnarled riff, every tricky time signature is a direct extension of their manhood. Melody and heart-on-the-sleeve lyrics are generally frowned upon because really, who wants to be accused of having smaller tallywhackers than the dudes in Lamb of God? Thankfully, Finland’s H.I.M. (short for His Infernal Majesty) cuts…
