This Week’s Day-By-Day Picks
Thursday, August 25 You know what we’re gonna miss most about summer? Hint: It’s not catching up on Lost reruns or cooling off in the multiplex with a big tub of popcorn. It’s the free weekly outdoor concerts that every community holds this time of year. Akron’s Downtown at Dusk series ranks as one of…
Coming Out of the Closet
R. Kelly does not know how to write. Really. He admitted to Vibe Magazine last year that he isn’t good at reading or writing, period. Yet this fact has not prevented the accused statutory rapist from writing “Trapped in the Closet,” a monstrous, multipart song that the crooner refers to as an “urban soap opera.”…
Lynn Cardona
How’d we let this one get away? Lynn Cardona, a silky-voiced thrush originally from these parts, now makes Memphis her home. The loss is ours, as evidenced by her svelte, soulful debut. Produced by former Squirrel Nut Zipper Jimbo Mathus, a man known more for raucous, Fat Possum-style blues than for these mellow sounds, Lovin’…
Dead Poets Society
On a balmy Sunday in May, Jakimah Dye was curled on the couch of her West Side duplex, her two-year-old daughter snuggled next to her, as always. They were watching Shrek 2. It was almost 11 p.m. They were tired, but they wanted to wait up for Dad. As he usually did, Reggie Brown had…
Big Pimpin’
Cleveland’s song of the summer follows in the grand tradition of drivin’ hoop ties, wearing diamond pinky rings, and slappin’ bitches with your sneaker. “I’m a pimp in my own fuckin’ mind,” native MC Ray Cash drawls on “Sex Appeal,” backed by a freaky, reverberating beat that sounds like a short-circuiting drum machine. He goes…
The Corndawg
Before his latest release, the Corndawg (aka Johnny Fritz of Philadelphia) was known exclusively as a musical prankster crooning obscene, country-fried novelty songs like “Is It Too Late to Abort?” But Fritz’s talent is nothing to smirk at. Southern by birth, he’s a great songwriter and a magnetic performer with a lonesome, Appalachian falsetto, and…
Hole Lotta Love
Derrick Downie shakes his head at the links of the Briarwood Golf Course. Every time he tees off, he prays his ball won’t land in the labyrinth of bunkers and ponds that dot the fairways. By the 10th hole, he knows the battle has only just begun. “The back nine is just a bear compared…
Beyond Priest, Beyond Earth
Tim “Ripper” Owens made a worldwide name for himself as Rob Halford’s replacement in Judas Priest. Then he became a permanent figure in the metal community by joining Iced Earth. And now his own band has landed a record deal. Stocked with Cleveland veterans, Owens’ Beyond Fear has signed with SPV, a sizable independent metalworks…
Rachel Roberts
In “Mango,” Rachel Roberts moans about an “extra supersaturated juicy little spot,” and seldom has passion fruit been this sexy. This year, the self-taught 21-year-old guitarist has been making noise in her native Akron, where she plays quiet suppertime sets every Monday at the Northside, a cozy blues spot. Like most compelling singer-songwriters, she’s suffering…
Skeletons’ Crew
Avant-pop music can be tricky. Steer one way, and it comes off as smug. Steer the other way, and it can be coy and cutesy. Matt Mehlan keeps his version squarely in the center. Mehlan’s been making music under the Skeletons moniker since 2002’s Everybody Dance With Your Steering Wheel. “It’s such a simple, unoriginal…
Norman Brown
A decade ago, Norman Brown’s After the Storm followed in the considerable footsteps of George Benson to set a new gold standard for romantic soul-jazz. Now the guitarist is at the eye of a storm again — namely, his Summer Storm concert tour, which pairs him with a trio of like-minded artists and promises to…
Model Behavior
WED 8/31 Gymnast-turned-model-turned-modern-dancer Miko Channell is a taskmaster at his day job, where he coaches preteens on dance moves at Wilson Middle School. “I can’t stand floppy arms,” he says. “I gotta have precision and grace.” The 28-year-old Channell has been kicking up his heels and avoiding floppy arms ever since his mom signed him…
Tommy Castro
What do you call a guitarist known to some as a “white Buddy Guy,” whose vocals sport a grit that conjures Otis Redding and whose songwriting comfortably spans rock, R&B, and blues? You call him a survivor. Tommy Castro has reigned as one of the Bay Area’s top guns for more than a decade and…
Pall Bearers
8/26-8/28 As captain of the J.J. Litehouse Restaurant team from Sharon, Pennsylvania, Don Bochert boasts of the gold-plated trophy his squad won at last year’s LakeTran Cleveland Challenge Cup of Bocce. But tournament tradition calls for the reigning champ to return the four-foot cup the following year. “We’ve been glad to have it for a…
Shawn Colvin
Like many women singer-songwriters, Shawn Colvin rose to prominence during the halcyon days of Lilith Fair. In the ’90s, she scored hits with “Sunny Came Home” and “I Don’t Know Why,” and won three Grammys. But Colvin never really fit the waifish Lilith stereotype. Her diverse background (singing in hard-rock and western-swing bands, playing guitar…
War! What Is It Good For?
FRI 8/26 Darryl Worley hit No. 1 on the country chart with the weeper “I Miss My Friend” in 2002. One year and one war later, he returned with a chunk of patriotic bluster, “Have You Forgotten?” (“Some say this country’s just out looking for a fight/After 9-11, man, I’d have to say that’s right.”)…
Cleveland Metal Fest
At every annual Cleveland Metal Festival, Northeast Ohio’s finer wrecking crews try to tear down Peabody’s, brick by brick. This year’s lineup is a steal — $10 for a weekend pass. Headlining Friday’s show is State of Conviction, the 1990s hardcore band featuring Jason Popson, formerly J. Mann of Mushroomhead and currently frontman of the…
No Scrubs
SAT 8/27 Derek Poindexter claims that Plasma’s fondness for wearing surgical gowns onstage has nothing to do with new-wave oddballs Devo, who were also known for wacky wardrobes. “The outfits were not so much inspired by the Brothers Casale or Mothersbaugh as they were by the scientific reference to plasma,” says Poindexter, the band’s bassist.…
Rodney Crowell
For two decades, rootsy singer-songwriter Rodney Crowell was known as a guy who could write a hit or produce a standout CD for someone else, but always pulled up lame when it came to his own records. That was before The Houston Kid, Crowell’s 2001 autobiographical masterpiece, which he released at the tender age of…
Black Forest
Terry Gilliam’s last film featured the former Monty Python troupe member as an eccentric, demanding, and difficult director, prone to destroying his ambitious projects before a single frame of footage was ever shot. “If it’s easy,” he says in the movie, “I don’t do it.” Alas, this was not a work of fanciful fiction made…
High Contrast
When High Contrast’s debut album, True Colours, dropped in 2002, its house sensibilities provided a refreshing shot in the arm of the stagnant drum & bass scene. Critics everywhere lauded the disc, praising a sound that triggered memories of New York City’s halcyon garage days. It was hard to imagine that Lincoln Barrett, the young…
No Way Out
Once you get past its negligible plot, scant dialogue, and almost zero action, Gus Van Sant’s elliptical rendering of the final hours in the troubled life of a grunge musician is rarely boring. That may seem like a backhanded compliment, but, in light of the absence of such customary cinematic conventions as story line and…
Engine Down
For years, Keeley Davis and Jonathan Fuller split their time between icy indie act Denali and post-hardcore project Engine Down. (Davis’ sister Maura fronted Denali, further tangling the bands’ family trees.) After Denali’s 2003 stint as the Deftones’ opening act, Davis and Fuller left that group to concentrate full-time on Engine Down. The resurgent outfit…
On Stage
Dark Room — The conventional image we have of playwrights and poets is of lonely souls slaving away in a poorly lit basement. Well, you’ve got the location and the illumination right, but everything else about the Dark Room project is much cheerier. Sponsored by the Cleveland Theater Collective, it’s a once-a-month workshop/cabaret for writers…
Smiley Baldazar CD-release party
If you’re into guitar solos and guys who talk a lot of smack very quickly, Smiley Baldazar is your new favorite band. The group’s brand-new debut, In Tents, sounds like Primus filtered through the Allman Brothers, added to two parts Zappa, then vigorously shaken. “I can play you something crazy nobody else knows,” singer-guitarist Steve…
On View
Alicia Basinger: Shiver and Craze — This recent Cleveland Institute of Art graduate is the latest headliner in MOCA’s Emerging Artist Series, and she deserves the spotlight. A ceramist, Basinger makes clay seem like a brand-new medium by mixing it with previously unrelated elements. In “Timber,” her most physically impressive work, tall cylinders of wire…
800 Drugs
It’s always Rock Night somewhere in Cleveland. This week’s pick is 800 Drugs, a special one-night appearance at the B-Side Liquor Lounge by local hardcore luminaries Pants Pantsley (left, of Oreon and formerly At Wits End) and Nate Jochum (the drumming machine for hardcore animals American Werewolves). Eyesore Clothing is sponsoring a night of progressively…
Grocery Score
Lean and lanky, with a blue-eyed gaze that’s steady as a laser beam, manager Anna Mavromichalis watches as the crowd starts to build in front of the lunch counter at Constantino’s Market, the new combination gourmet market and corner convenience store settled in the Warehouse District. If there are still naysayers who believe that downtown…
Opeth
The hard and soft sides of this Swedish metal group’s dark, enveloping sound were showcased separately on its last two albums, Deliverance and Damnation. On Ghost Reveries, the band’s Roadrunner debut, they’ve been merged. Keyboardist Per Wiberg, previously part of the group’s touring lineup, but now a full-time band member, is a major presence on…
Till Death Do Us Part
In 1986, Merle Mishne signed a will that left most of his $409,000 estate to his wife, Laurie, when her plans of killing him were still just a twinkle in her eye. In June, Laurie was sentenced to 15 years for aiding her boyfriend, Dan Gordon Johnson, who bludgeoned Mishne to death last year. Doting…
Capital W
Few things have bugged us more intensely than the fact that, while it had dibs on the most spectacular view in all of Northeast Ohio, Pier W (12700 Lake Avenue, Lakewood, 216-228-2250) squandered it on mediocre food and clichéd, dated decor. But get a load of that bad boy now. After an eight-month hiatus, the…
Every Time I Die
Unlike hardcore acts that draw inspiration only from other hardcore acts (a choice that leads to uninteresting inbred arrangements), Every Time I Die embraces southern metal’s rhythmic grooves, eerie East Bay Ray-style guitars, and garage rock’s cocky swagger. Frontman Keith Buckley enunciates every shriek like a gleeful demon in a horror film, and during the…
Mouthful of Lies
Mouthful of Lies Swifties’ tactics not so swift: Those Swift Boat crybabies can’t seem to open their mouths without lies spilling out, as career John Kerry-hater Tom Wright illustrates when he claims, “No one has successfully challenged our facts . . .” [Letters, August 17]. A simple internet search using the words “Swift Boat vet…
Tori Amos 101
When she’s in a certain mode, Tori Amos is empowered, furious, and lucid. Her 1992 solo debut, Little Earthquakes, draws blood, and even delicate songs like “Silent All These Years” leave bruises: “So you found a girl who thinks really deep thoughts/What’s so amazing about really deep thoughts?/Boy, you best pray that I bleed real…
Death Cab for Cutie
What Death Cab for Cutie does best on Plans, its major-label debut, is capture moments of melancholy — the dissolution of a summer romance, growing apart from a lover, being dumped by an egotistical jerk — and analyze them with great honesty. Take the tear-inducing “What Sarah Said.” Solitary piano chords drive a vivid depiction…
The Sniper
C.C. Sabathia is dressing after a loss to the White Sox. The Jacobs Field locker room is almost bare, save for huge leather couches and state-of-the-art electronics. Yet the meaty ace-in-waiting is in no mood for reflection. And he surely doesn’t want to speak about Plain Dealer columnist Roger Brown. His beef goes back to…
Selling the Sizzla
There are artists you’ll hear described as a “publicist’s dream.” And then there’s Sizzla. That’s not to imply that Sizzla Kalonji, a dancehall legend dubbed “The King” in his native Jamaica, is rude, reluctant to answer questions, or flaky. In fact, he’s very much the opposite: polite, thoughtful, and as open as you could wish.…
Magic Slim & the Teardrops
Music like this gets harder to find by the day. Magic Slim & the Teardrops’ tag as “the last real Chicago blues band” may be a bit of an exaggeration — but not by much. And the label gathers more authenticity with every passing year. The ’50s and ’60s marked the golden era of Windy…
