A Taste for History
Along with raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, historic Ohio buildings rank high on the list of my favorite things. Pair one up with the promise of a good meal, and not even the threat of bee stings is likely to keep me away. I tell you this by way of explaining a recent…
Kicks From the Kitchen
At first pass, white-jacketed chefs wouldn’t seem to have much in common with burly Browns players. But for the second year running, the two have teamed up to bring a Taste of the NFL Celebrity Dinner to Browns Stadium, in support of the Cleveland Foodbank and Cleveland Food Rescue. This year’s event will be Tuesday,…
Back for Moore
In the wildly fantastic opening scene of the 1976 film The Human Tornado (Dolemite 2), a large, completely naked man rolls down an embankment. The scene ends when the man reaches bottom and stops, but it rewinds for a slow motion “instant replay,” allowing the viewer to see it one more time. Of course, this…
Generation Whine
There’s a description in the press release that accompanied Mötley Crüe’s latest album, New Tattoo, that accurately sums up the band’s appeal: “If you want to get laid, listen to Mötley Crüe,” it asserts. “We’re the smut mags of the music industry.” Singer Vince Neil, who admits he hasn’t even read his own press material,…
Soundbites
During the height of its popularity in the late ’70s and mid-’80s, Judas Priest was one of the hardest-rocking bands on the metal circuit. So when singer Rob Halford, who left the group on amicable terms in 1991, came out of the closet a couple of years ago, rumors circulated freely about the liberties that…
A Wrinkle in Mime
The first lesson of mime is to think outside the box, not get trapped in it. The antics of whitefaced mimes — the box, the glass wall, the strong wind — rub Stephen Chipps the wrong way, and he’s not taking it quietly. “I think mime has a bad rap, because there are a lot…
Jets to Brazil
Jets to Brazil’s pedigree has really been problematic only for the fans who can’t seem to reconcile its past. It’s admittedly difficult to separate guitarist Blake Schwarzenbach from his six-year stint in Jawbreaker, one of the most influential post-punk bands ever to strike an angular chord. The rest of JTB — guitarist Brian Maryansky, bassist…
Moxy Music
At about the same time Seattle was suffering from an overdose of flannel shirts and Nirvana sound-alike contests, Moxy Früvous was working a Toronto street corner like a crew of jugglers. The four-piece band used its vocal harmonies and outrageous costumes to dispense wit and political satire for the price of a few dimes tossed…
John Wesley Harding
Before he was sidelined by aspirations to become a full-time folk singer, John Wesley Harding was earmarked for pre-alt-rock stardom in the modern rock arena. He was witty, charming, and positively poppy on his marvelous 1989 debut EP God Made Me Do It — The Christmas EP. The full-length follow-up, Here Comes the Groom, was…
Jaws: The Revenge
Amanda Peet has some really large teeth. Seriously. Even given the fact that it’s in vogue for hot, young, would-be sex symbols to have a set of brightly polished choppers prominent for all to see (think Neve Campbell, Casper Van Dien, or Denise Richards), Amanda’s impressive ivories take the cake. In Whipped, they’re not even…
Buddy Rich
Clarke-Boland Big Band Handle With Care (Koch) Clare Fischer Thesaurus (Koch) During the ’30s and early ’40s, big band jazz was popular music. The recordings of Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, and Artie Shaw had tremendous mass appeal, but due to changing tastes and skyrocketing expenses, by the mid-’40s these large ensembles began to…
The Wrath of Khan
Despite the title East Is East, the big message of this flavorful domestic memoir is really that West is West. In the tug-of-war between East and West for a soul, East, the film suggests, may hold out for a while through a combination of nostalgia, pride, national resentment, and simple cultural vertigo, but in the…
The GC5
The members of Lakewood’s GC5 aren’t old enough to remember when rock was dangerous and only rebels listened to the stuff. But they’re doing their damnedest to bring back those days. For the GC5, which formed in early 1996 and released its first album, A More Aggressive Approach Towards Peacekeeping, in 1998, politics and music…
Pedal to the Mettle
They don’t wear helmets, and they don’t use brakes. They dive through Cleveland’s streets every day on bicycles built for racetracks, rushing dozens of packages across downtown, dodging hostile buses and cars. And at the end of the day, they relax over pints on a bar’s patio, five of Cleveland’s two or three dozen bike…
Alice Cooper
It’s not exactly clear at which point Alice Cooper (Vincent Furnier) changed from an entertaining ’60s garage-inspired hard rock pioneer to an uninspired heavy metal grindcore bore. Perhaps it was when people stopped listening to Cooper after his last salvageable recording — 1976’s Alice Cooper Goes to Hell. The shifting tides of disco on one…
Ink-Stained Wretches
“Hey, lookit — Superman’s got a boner,” says The Joker, giggling beneath his white makeup. “Hey, Superman! Is that kryptonite in your pocket, or are you happy to see me?” The Joker keeps laughing, and suddenly, beneath the green hair and purple suit, he sounds like a 12-year-old girl, perhaps because he is a 12-year-old…
Britney Spears, with PYT and sister2sister
The words to Britney Spears’s first big hit, “Baby One More Time,” the title track from her 1999 debut, can practically be sung over the refrain of the title track to her follow-up, Oops! . . . I Did It Again, and you wouldn’t notice the difference. In fact, it’s telling that Spears’s brief reign…
Write and Wrong
Success is relative in Hollywood, like a third cousin twice-removed who doesn’t recognize you at family reunions, and doesn’t care to. Fame is so fleeting it has a month-by-month lease. Six years ago, Christopher McQuarrie was as famous as any screenwriter on the backlot known as Los Angeles. He had gone to the Academy Awards…
Goudie, with Unified Theory, the TwistOffs, and Tender Blindspot
Even though it comes from the alternacountry town of Austin, Texas, nary a twang can be heard on Peep Show, Goudie’s resonant debut. Paced by the expert pop of “Baby Hello” and the aqueous, minimalist “Strange,” this quartet boasts compelling vocals and lyrics by Johnny Goudie, the androgynously throated Houston native whose decadent articulations drive…
The Homeless Are Homeless Again
After losing the Camelot homeless encampment to the wrecking ball a few weeks ago, self-appointed President of the Homeless Dave Campbell recently reflected on the unsuccessful standoff. He blames Rosewater, a group of homeless activists, for failing to maintain a united front. “The city didn’t win,” Campbell says. “We lost.” Most of the Camelotians moved…
Hookahville 2000, featuring Ekoostik Hookah, Jorma Kaukonen Trio, Alvin Youngblood Hart, CPR, and the Dickey Betts Band
The seeds for Hookahville Fall 2000 were planted seven years ago when Ekoostik Hookah keyboardist Dave Katz allowed his backyard to be the setting for an outdoor concert. For the Columbus-based jam band, that particular show became the next step in a recording and touring process that has remained fiercely independent of any outside control.…
Pinto’s Safety Concerns
Rear-ending an expert opinion: I enjoyed your article [“Feel Sorry for Men,” August 17] very much and wanted to make a comment on just one part. Therapist Vince Pinto talks about female batterers and their responsiveness to court-ordered programs. He states that “their fists usually fly out of fear for their own safety rather than…
Ties That Bind
Foot-binding endured for more than 1,000 years in China without widespread resistance. The once-pervasive cultural practice of bandaging girls’ feet so tightly that normal growth could not occur is now a thing of the past, but today many Chinese women are attempting to understand the reasons for the persistence of a practice that permanently disfigured…
By George
Last week we left a passel of Clevelanders at the Shaw Festival, indulging their predilection for scones and Royal Doulton china. Now it’s time to get down to business, making some serious theatrical choices. The secret of the Shaw Festival is that it is as incapable of producing an incompetent production as Norman Rockwell was…
