Golden Boys
Theater aficionados of the ’60s and ’70s, weary of overblown musicals and Neil Simon retreads, embraced the macho metaphysics of Sam Shepard and the menacing power struggles of Harold Pinter. These playwrights, once considered shocking and hard to take, have become revered influences in the ensuing decades, although their works remain difficult to pull off.…
Lazarus, Reborn
Peter Bogdanovich, maybe the last man alive who wears a neckerchief without irony, holds a copy of a newspaper article in which his old friend Larry McMurtry is saying nice, or not nice, things about him–Bogdanovich can’t tell which. “He’s kind of risen from the dead,” McMurtry was quoted as saying of the director who…
Market Rallies
The North Union Farmers Market began its eighth season on Shaker Square last Saturday, supporting the region’s small family farms and introducing city dwellers to the joys of fresh, seasonal produce. And market manager Donita Anderson says 2002 is shaping up to be the nonprofit group’s biggest year yet. As many as 20 new farmers…
Hip to Be Squared
At Sushi on the Square, those in the know begin the night with bottles of Kirin, Sapporo, and Asahi, sided by bowls of edamame. The strong, smooth Japanese lagers are easy-drinking foils for the salty steamed soybeans, and while it tickles the same taste buds, the combination is a good deal more worldly than Bud…
Pop Picassos
Ah, No Doubt. Less a rock band than a perfectly balanced musical equation. Both sides equally relevant, equally weighted, equally responsible for the band’s meteoric rise (2002) following the meteoric fall (2000) that followed the meteoric rise (1995). It goes something like this: Musical adroitness = frivolous sexuality. Bouncy ska-punk rhythms = pouty blond chick…
Dog Day Afternoons
It’s been a hard day’s night, and Tasha’s been working like a dog. Which is not so surprising, given that she is a Belgian Malinois. Tasha is one of dozens of canines participating in Lake Farmpark’s Working Dog Weekend, a celebration of the various skills of man’s best friend, from law enforcement and therapy to…
Hot to Trot
“Well, pretty much, the idea was to make something that could barely be described as music,” Wilco bassist John Stirratt laughs, as he reminisces about the band’s bull sessions prior to starting work on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Wilco’s newly released fourth album. He’s surprisingly peppy, given all the strife surrounding Foxtrot, an album that occasioned…
Dude Looks Like First Lady
Lucretia Garfield, the wife of 20th U.S. President James A. Garfield, was born 170 years ago this month. And the James A. Garfield National Historic Site is celebrating this joyous occasion by hosting Tea With Lucretia, a one-man show of stories and memories, on April 28. It’s just like Give ‘Em Hell, Harry! . .…
Rite of Spring
Retch. Regurgitation. Severe Torture. Glancing at the flier for the Ohio Deathfest, it’s hard to tell if it refers to a gore-basted metal show or dinner at White Castle. Either way, it’s a good idea to keep the Pepto-Bismol handy. Particularly when it comes to the former, as death metal delights in all that’s rank…
Lip Service
The thoroughly unlikable heroine of Life or Something Like It is a vain, actressy bleached blonde in the employ of a Seattle TV station. To call her a “reporter” is to defame reporters. Her hairspray outweighs her brain, and everything in her life — from her obsessive workouts at the health club to her tube-friendly…
Eyes Adrift
Krist Novoselic is about to revisit the kind of media scrutiny reserved for the nosebleed echelon of rock celebrity, when he returns to the spotlight with his latest band, the quasi-supergroup Eyes Adrift. The trio, consisting of former Nirvana bassist Novoselic, Meat Puppets guitarist/vocalist Curt Kirkwood, and ex-Sublime/Long Beach Dub Allstars drummer Bud Gaugh, is…
Jason in Space
From the get-go, there has been an appealing pugnacity to the Friday the 13th horror movies. Sure, this enduring franchise was launched in 1980 as a marginally clever knockoff of Halloween and Black Christmas, but in the annals of American pop cinema, the sequels revealed a devil-may-care brattiness all their own. Narratively nonsensical, obscenely violent,…
Flogging Molly
Take an opening band gig and blow the headliner off the stage, and you’ll turn heads. Do so when the Mighty Mighty Bosstones are that headliner, and you’ll spin ’em. Meet Flogging Molly, who did just that but a few years ago and now finds itself near the peak of punk rock’s Mount Olympus with…
Cat Fight
Poor William Randolph Hearst. The snapping dogs of Hollywood just won’t leave the guy alone. It’s been barely 60 years since a little epic called Citizen Kane portrayed the great newspaper tycoon as a ruthless dictator who degenerated into an emotional basket case, and already there’s more bad publicity in the works. In his first…
Prong
The only thing harder than Prong’s music is its luck. One of the most underrated metal bands of the past two decades, Prong set the standard for corrosive, stop-start riffing in the early ’90s, supplying the I-beams upon which modern metal was built. With New York industrial subverts Killing Joke serving as the band’s prime…
See No Evil
Charles Kittinger stares out from his Mercury Sable at the industrial landfill he once owned. A chain-link fence seals off what used to be the main entrance. Brown grass covers the earth like a bad toupee. But he sees none of that. He’s looking into the past, to the day in 1969 or ’70 when…
Paul McCartney
You’d think that people would have had enough of Paul McCartney. Look around and you’ll see it isn’t so. Not by a long shot. Whatever your opinion of the lightweight Beatle and his musical contributions since the famous breakup 32 years ago, you can’t fault Paul’s work ethic, particularly for a guy turning 60 in…
Nine Lives of a Salesman
Michael Jeffrey Lukas may have had the best deals in Ohio. He offered the choicest booze — Absolut, Crown Royal, Jack Daniel’s — for delivery to party halls from Avon Lake to Brunswick. And when hall owners passed out his business cards to customers and said no one could beat his prices, they weren’t kidding.…
J-Live
If Ja Rule’s theory that cranking out an album every year is the only way to stay atop the rap charts, it’s no wonder J-Live is still strictly an underground sensation. The much-hyped Brooklynite lost his entire first album, The Best Part, to record-label consolidation, and he hasn’t officially released anything since bursting onto the…
Endangered Species
Before the lens of a Channel 5 camera, Najee Muhammad looks like he’s exhorting a teeming throng to rise against their oppressors. He wears the all-black military uniform of the Black Panthers. His face is a mask of defiance, and he speaks in confrontational tones. “I’m giving a warning of a moment of extreme danger…
Elvis Costello
Elvis Costello is such a chameleon, it’s easy to forget how well he can rock. A dazzling wordsmith and increasingly flexible vocalist, he’s spent much of the past five years on projects only distantly related to rock and roll, like work with the Mingus Big Band and soprano Annie Sofie Von Otter. His first rock…
What to Do About Sam?
Everybody seems to like Plain Dealer columnist Sam Fulwood III. As well they should. He’s bright, engaging, fiery, funny, down-home. “Sam is a very nice guy, very gregarious,” says one writer. Unfortunately, covering his liabilities is a much longer conversation. Inside the newsroom, Fulwood has been a topic of derision since his arrival. Colleagues lament…
The Promise Ring
Just as XTC abandoned its spiky new-wave origins for pastoral folk pop, the Promise Ring trades its emo roots for a quieter atmosphere with the transitional Wood/Water. The disc is the Promise Ring’s first album since frontman Davey von Bohlen’s brain surgery last year, and while von Bohlen himself has joked that the surgeons removed…
Janitor for Jesus
At one time, Rudy Verhosek had the soul of a butterfly. Though he was a big guy whose bare hands could bend metal, his disposition was gentle, and he always looked out for the downtrodden and less fortunate. His sensitive nature, combined with a gift for lifting heavy objects and handling power tools, did not…
Paul Westerberg / Grandpa Boy
Where have you been, Paul Westerberg? An indie nation turned its lonely eyes to you, and you were off whoring your talents with Don Was. That’s not the way poets of punk disaffection should grow old. Sure, it’s hard following up a catalog that moved pock-faced, nothing-to-Dü teens to give a shit and not give…
Down With Mushroomhead
The masked metalheads have more to prove: I really enjoyed your article “The Most Powerful People in Cleveland Music” [March 14]. It was very informative. I am very familiar with some of the people on the list and totally unfamiliar with others, but I was glad to see who is who. I hope you will…
The Cowslingers
To borrow a line from comedian Bill Hicks, the Cowslingers are weekend drinkers: They start on Saturday and end on Friday. And just like the whiskey that fuels them, these cowpunk front-runners pack a welcome — if somewhat predictable — buzz. Greg Miller howls like a coyote in heat. Guitars burn like shots of Wild…
