Cello Shots
THU 4/28 Melora Creager first picked up the cello when she was nine years old, because “the bigness appealed to me.” These days, the frontwoman for cello-rock ensemble Rasputina has other motives for playing the massive string instrument. “I’ve never been limited for sound or ideas,” she says. “I keep learning more.” Rasputina has a…
Muse
“Muse (n): A state of deep thought or dreamy abstraction.” Critics who are quick to dismiss the U.K. rock trio Muse as “Radiohead rip-offs” would certainly say that this rock band did some deep thinking, absorbed Radiohead’s songwriting style into its thoughts, and simply put a new name on the record. If you’re wise, though,…
Jokes? What Jokes?
Author Douglas Adams died at age 49 on May 11, 2001, of a heart attack suffered during a workout at a Santa Barbara, California gym. His biographer, M.J. Simpson, blamed Adams’ demise in part on his unending battle to get The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy on a big screen, insisting in Hitchhiker, his 2003…
Gogol Bordello
If you think the theme of sex, drugs, and rock and roll has been played out, a single listen to Gogol Bordello will restore your faith in the power of music to jolt you out of complacency. Gogol’s lead singer, songwriter, and chief maniac, Eugene Hutz, and his cohorts continue their cultural crusade to build…
Cold Case
Agent Fox Mulder, the coolly instinctual sleuth of The X-Files, got pretty good at unraveling paranormal mysteries. If only the actor who played him were as adept at solving the riddle of his movie career. David Duchovny’s new vanity project, House of D, is the tortured tale of a 13-year-old boy facing tough choices, family…
Supersystem
Bands change their names for myriad reasons. Like, say, threats of legal action from other groups of the same name, drastic lineup changes, or just plain dislike of the moniker. Supersystem is one of very few bands to change its name for all three reasons. When the group, then a trio, got started in 1996…
Limp Pianist
Just when you thought it was safe to go back into Hungary and listen to a song that supposedly causes people to kill themselves, along comes Gloomy Sunday. This tragic romance is elegant, picturesque, sensuous, and rather stilted, but three out of four makes for reasonable enough viewing. As long as you happen to like…
Electric Six
Unlike many of the nü-wave rock bands, Electric Six isn’t music you can dance to — it’s music you have to dance to. Formerly the Wildbunch, the Detroit sextet broke big in Britain with “Danger! High Voltage” in 2001, then rechristened itself E6 in 2003, re-recorded the song, and scored another hit with the new…
Venus Attacks
“A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.” That quip was uttered by proto-feminist Gloria Steinem around 1970 — 30 years before she swam over and hopped on her own velocipede in the form of hubby David Bale. Far from giving the lie to her earlier proclamation of feisty independence, Steinem’s…
Indigenous
Mato Nanji is enough of a blues-guitar monster to play it exclusively. Easily one of the top-tier players of the post-Hendrix/Stevie Ray Vaughan school, this son of the Nakota Sioux Indian nation could forever make his rent blowing the crowd away, knocking down straight blues choruses on the bar and festival circuit. Fronting his family…
Notable Integrity Alumni
· Dwid Hellion, vocals · Bill Gill, drums · Frank Cavanaugh, bass: Filter · Derrick Green, guitar: Sepultura · Aaron Melnick, guitar: In Cold Blood · Tom Brose, bass: Confront · Tony “Chubbz” Pines, drums: One Life Crew · Lenny Melnick, bass: In Cold Blood · Bill McKinney, 2nd guitar · Chris Smith, 2nd guitar:…
Amped Up
One of the greatest modern-day magic acts is centered in that ubiquitous socket that hovers above the baseboard. We blithely plug all manner of gizmos into those mysterious double rectangular slots, and everything starts whirring, humming, and buzzing. It all seems like a massive leap of faith, since we never see a tangible power supply,…
Ryan Adams
Ryan Adams is many things — a brilliant singer-songwriter, an alt-country bad boy, Americana-rock incarnate, a cocky bastard. Known for his pissy attitude and staggering confidence almost as much as for his musical abilities, Adams is the kind of performer who leaves an audience ready to pick fights with strangers. The former Whiskeytown frontman has…
Electric Lacrosse
Rookie Richard Busich comes prepared for practice. When you’re the youngest player on the third-best WhirlyBall team in the nation, you can’t mess around. He has his training uniform: jeans, Bruce Lee T-shirt, and baseball hat turned backward over long, dark hair. And he has his modified scoop: a lacrosse stick from Dick’s, taped for…
On Stage
Beauty and the Beast — Carousel’s version of the ubiquitous show features some terrifically enjoyable performances, but it lacks visual appeal. Many scenes — even intimate two-person moments — are played on the theater’s immense but essentially bare stage, sometimes in front of a painted backdrop or a silvery curtain. At times, it feels like…
Rufio
Here we go again. Rufio is yet another band born of the So-Cal pop-punk implosion. Wide-eyed, fast guitars and hard drums lace up to (could it be?) whiny, nasal vocals in songs about misery, hopelessness, and waiting for the next best thing. It would be moot to argue whether or not this is grating. The…
The Sin That Keeps on Giving
The victims rose, one after another, for eight full hours, telling stories of their childhoods, when the most trusted people in their lives raped them. Sodomized them. Groped them. Lied to them. Under the intricate gold leaf of the hearing room, beneath the oversized portraits of dead statesmen and the bank of senators peering down…
High Steaks
It’s gotten so you can’t swing a cowboy ’round these parts without him smackin’ upside a high-class steakhouse. It figures. Diet fads come and diet fads go, but deep within the culinary unconsciousness of most Americans remains the notion that a thick slab of prime beef is shorthand for The Good Life. It’s no surprise,…
Julie Dexter and Middlechild
Julie Dexter might be the best soul singer you haven’t heard about — and if you have, make sure you have a ticket to her upcoming gig at Club 75. The Atlanta-based jazz-funk-soul chanteuse draws favorable comparisons to Alicia Keys (and deserves them), but with less gloss (that’s a good thing). The Jamaican-born singer-songwriter arranges,…
Playa Police
Play on, playa! That, essentially, was an arbitrator’s ruling last week in the case of Painesville cop Stuart Underwood, who was fired last year for rocking the world of his mistress while on duty. Underwood’s flame claimed they had sex on numerous occasions while he was supposed to be patrolling the mean streets. While admitting…
On View
NEW Syzygy — The contemporary equivalent of the art museum’s fine Phillips Collection of masterpieces, this is a Who’s Who of art’s cutting edge, from John Currin to Raymond Pettibon to Yoshitomo Nara. Brute honesty is the driving force in “Tom’s Girlfriend,” Dana Schutz’s memorable portrait of an awkward teenager smiling through misery as she…
DJ Spooky
Because he’s taken hip-hop so far into the realm of the abstract and the avant-garde, some might assume that Paul Miller prefers musique concrete to sweaty, hard-hitting beats. The first blast of Drums of Death should correct that impression. This collaboration between Spooky and Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo is about as gritty as cutting and…
Trashing Grandpa
Trashing Grandpa It was the system that was delinquent: This article showed just how screwed up America has become [“Ghost in the House,” April 13]. All the youths who entered the house were subject to punishment by our “outstanding” judicial system, yet a frail, elderly man, who obviously is in need of the basic elements…
Last Bites
In order to get a full picture of the kitchen’s craft, our party of two ordered a lot of food. More cost-conscious diners might spend less, but here’s how our experiences stacked up (ratings are based on a five-star scale, with five being the best): Delmonico’s — Two cocktails, one appetizer, two salads, two prime…
Devil Doll
Five reasons to see Colleen ³Devil Doll² Duffy: 1) She’s from Cleveland. 2) It would mean a lot to her. 3) She puts on a musical cabaret act. 4) She’s toured with Social Distortion, the Cramps, and Royal Crown Revue. 4) This quote from her press kit: “Devil Doll is the punk rock torch singer…
Wonder Years
It’s been a dozen years since the Wonder Stuff has recorded a new album, and frontman Miles Hunt is resigned to the fact that most listeners who can recall its 1991 modern-rock hit, “The Size of a Cow,” have forgotten all about the band by now. “It’s understandable,” he sighs. But with a new CD,…
Anger Machine
In a recent New York Times article that disputes the age-old link between creativity and depression, author Peter D. Kramer claims that it is “depression — and not resistance to it or recovery from it — that diminishes the self.” Devoted acolytes of Nine Inch Nails major-domo Trent Reznor would heartily disagree with such a…
Lyrics Born
With the distribution help of new corporate partner Epitaph, Bay Area hip-hop perfectionist Lyrics Born loosens up, orders the backpacks burned, and razes the roof of the rap underground. Fans might claim that he did the same on his wide-ranging and meticulously self-produced 2003 solo debut, Later That Day . . . , but LB…
This Week’s Day-By-Day Picks
Thursday, April 28 Things are looking up for Sacramento’s Still Life Projector. The emo band’s 2004 indie CD The Dance Riot is being re-released on Tuesday by genre fave Victory Records. The wider distribution should mean more fans for the group, which plays around with the same soft-verses/loud-choruses structure that its peers adore. It also…
Renewing His Vows
Moody, romantic, desperate, and dazzling, the Wedding Present specializes in gloomy pop songs about relationships gone awry, amplified by gorgeous, soaring guitars. Singer, chief songwriter, lead guitarist, and sole constant member David Gedge is fixated on the intricacies of being intensely jealous, getting dumped, making an ass of oneself, and leaving embarrassing messages on a…
Unsane
This year marks the 10th anniversary of Unsane’s “Scrape” video, which paired the band’s brutal blasts with vivid footage of gnarly skateboarding injuries. That MTV moment marked the crest of the cult band’s pseudo-stardom, but for all its aggressively inaccessible tendencies (grotesque album art, feedback-throttled shows), Unsane remains just a buzz clip away from the…
Beer Here
Joe Waizmann won’t hold a grudge if you belly up to the bar and ask for one of those “industrial” beers. If you want to spend money on a ho-hum bottle of Bud Lite or Michelob, then be his guest. “I’m not trying to convert Joe Six-Pack or XYZ light-beer drinker,” says Waizmann, a veteran…
Lil Jon’s Biggest Head Bussas
As late as a year ago, Lil Jon was still, to casual music fans, merely Robin Hood’s sidekick. That changed for good in the wake of Usher’s across-the-board No. 1 hit “Yeah!” Suddenly, even soccer moms were scanning the glut of “What Is Crunk?” stories written primarily to introduce the world to the 21st-century Lil…
Aimee Mann
Listeners who complained about the lack of emotional involvement in Aimee Mann’s last disc, Lost in Space, must’ve overlooked the album’s title: Mann’s songs detailed the numbness induced by addiction, heartbreak, and professional disappointment, so her blank, spacey guitars and coolly detached singing reflected that loss of feeling — that sense of drifting through time…
Garden State
FRI 4/29 Fionnuala Sherry stared at the rocky landscape outside a Danish recording studio last year, as Secret Garden polished up its sixth CD. As she listened to the 12 tracks on Earthsongs, the Irish-born violinist felt the “organic nature” of the duo’s neoclassical roots. “There’s something about me and that room that works,” she…
Presidential Playlist
The Oval Office has never been so square. This much we know, after the contents of George W. Bush’s iPod were revealed a few weeks back. You can’t sow fear into the hearts of ruthless dictators rockin’ the Knack. Nor can you hope to solve the budget crisis when you can’t even figure out that…
Fiona Apple
Fiona Apple’s unreleased third album is all over the net now, liberated by copyright unbelievers. Some posting the music to their blogs are conflicted: They satisfy their craving for Apple’s music, knowing she’ll see not one penny, but they justify their deeds. After all, they will say, she’s being held captive by Sony Music, which…
Gentleman, Start Your Joysticks
4/28-5/4 On weekends, the lines stretch so long at the Silicon Motor Speedway that armchair Jeff Gordons wait more than an hour to pretend they’re in the Daytona 500. SMS is Ohio’s only simulated NASCAR track, where video screens encase race cars that accelerate up to 220 miles an hour during six-minute races. “They’ll bank…
Rock and Roll All Over
The Cleveland Music Festival returns for its fourth year Thursday, May 12, through Sunday, May 15. Four venues will host more than 200 local bands, 20 national acts, and 20 speakers from the music industry. “The whole idea is to get the Cleveland local bands heard nationally,” says festival organizer Dan Cull, also a co-owner…
Jacknife Powerbombs
Set to Go! is muscle-car punk rock that starts off like a Sweet album played at 45 rpm, and it gets nastier with every single song. Though the band has been playing since 2001, technically this is its full-length debut, if you don’t include Set to Go! Live, which features all the same songs, recorded…
Something About Harland
THU 4/28 Harland Williams played an imprisoned roommate in Half-Baked, a serial killer in There’s Something About Mary, and a state trooper who chugged urine in Dumb & Dumber. When the comedian isn’t messing around with body fluids, he’s playing to younger crowds with a similarly skewed sense of humor. He voices one of the…
Europe
With its cuddly melody and dire lyrics, Europe’s “The Final Countdown” conjures images of an adorable apocalypse, where unicorns impale awestruck observers and rabbits show their dark sides, as foreshadowed by Monty Python. It’s also synonymous with school bands and, thanks to Arrested Development, ill-fated magic shows. But this Sweden-based troupe has more to offer…
Filament 38
Initially, it seems counterintuitive to dance to the sound of women and children being mowed down by machine-gun fire. But on “Blood,” from their sophomore LP, Unstable, the members of Filament 38 turn violent chaos into a pulsating, post-apocalyptic rave-up. To strip death of emotion is their way of showing how disaffected the masses have…
