Thrash and Churn
FRI 8/6 One way or another, Nathan Singer is going to play out his sarcastic satires onstage. When he’s not fronting Cincinnati rockers Absinthium, Singer’s on the road supporting his first “thrash novel,” A Prayer for Dawn. “At first I thought, I have hit a new low in self-indulgence,” says the 27-year-old Singer. “But people…
Projekt Revolution Tour
The eight-hour Projekt Revolution festival is a lot like Lollapalooza once was: a long, eclectic rundown of name-brand, rock-the-house acts, one following the other in rapid succession. Rock, represented by the Used and Less Than Jake, is in the minority here. Two of hip-hop’s modern greats, Ghostface and Snoop Dogg, provide the street cred. And…
The Lost Years
It’s the type of day you see only in Claritin ads. The sky is an azure blue, the sun sits high on the clouds, and in their huge, golf-course-like backyard in Westlake, Dawn and Michael Patterson are hovering over their propane grill, barbecuing chicken breasts and waiting for the guests to arrive. “Do you think…
Space Jam
SUN 8/8 Keller Williams is a one-man jam band. Onstage, the Virginia-based singer-songwriter plays a series of guitars, percussion instruments, and loops. And he goes on and on, just like his jam-band brethren. “I’m definitely plugged in,” he laughs. “And I have an infinite amount of freedom.” (Keller is part of the Acoustic Planet Tour,…
Paul Thorn
Paul Thorn’s latest and strongest album to date, Mission Temple Fireworks Stand, is a gospel-flavored gathering of homespun proverbs and proclamations from characters of the type who sell “cherry bombs for Jesus.” Not that Thorn hasn’t had a wealth of his own experiences. Born the son of a Pentecostal preacher in Tupelo, Mississippi (birthplace of…
Locked & Loaded
When Ohio’s concealed-weapons law was passed with the provision that only journalists have access to the names of registered carriers, Plain Dealer Editor Doug Clifton declared that he would publish complete lists of all area residents who receive the permits. Last week, The PD splashed the names of heat-packing Northeast Ohioans over two and a…
Collateral Damaged
Sheathed in a custom-tailored gray suit and sporting expensively barbered silver hair, Tom Cruise looks like an older, harder version of the self-absorbed L.A. sharpie he played 16 years ago in Rain Man. But in Collateral, a frenetic Michael Mann thriller that runs up a Baghdad-level body count, Cruise’s character gets scarcely a whiff of…
Fear Factory
Few bands walk the genre tightrope in the manner that Fear Factory has done. Combining death-metal intensity, industrial precision, and vocals that can actually be deciphered, Fear Factory struck chords with headbangers and the technology-obsessed alike. One has only to look at the band’s more notable moments — Demanufacture’s fury, Fear Is the Mindkiller’s remixed…
Grape Escape
After Donniella Winchell comes home from a day at the office, she kicks off her shoes, puts up her feet, and mellows with a glass of Pinot Gris. It’s good to be the state wine industry’s head cheerleader. As the executive director of the Ohio Wine Producers Association, Winchell created Vintage Ohio 10 years ago…
Gag Order
Winner of the Dramatic Audience Award at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, Maria Full of Grace is an uncomfortably realistic look at a 17-year-old Colombian woman who, desperate for a job, agrees to swallow capsules of heroin and transport them to New York. Although a work of fiction, the film (in Spanish, with English subtitles)…
Yonder Mountain String Band
Just as Phish and countless other electric bands stepped up to claim the tripped-out-jam-band legacy bequeathed by the Grateful Dead, several acoustic bands have come along to remind us that Jerry was a bluegrass aficionado too. Though the Yonder Mountain String Band is not expressly a jam band — it mostly plays straight-ahead bluegrass and…
This Week’s Day-By-Day Picks
Thursday, August 5 Canton’s annual bacchanal, the Pro Football Hall of Fame Festival, happens this weekend. Ostensibly, it’s about inducting pigskin greats — like John Elway and Barry Sanders — into the museum. It’s also a convenient excuse for tailgate-style revelry. The party gets started with the Ribs Burnoff at the Stark County Fairgrounds (305…
Nasty Girl
Little Black Book, with its Carly Simon soundtrack all but daring you to tune it out before it begins, is being marketed as a daffy romantic comedy in which a woman plows through her boyfriend’s Palm to uncover his past relationships. In truth, the movie’s anything but light and frothy; it’s actually disquietingly dark to…
Gomez
If Gomez were American, it’d likely be the choice soundtrack for college kids who worship Ben Harper and G. Love in dorm rooms that reek of patchouli. But since the group hails from England, the quintet instead earns its accolades overseas — such as the Mercury Music Prize for its 1998 debut, Bring It On…
Hammered Humor
When it comes to stand-up or sketch comedy, wielding a sledgehammer can be pretty funny and sort of liberating — just ask fans of Gallagher and Carrot Top. But it wears thin pretty quickly if more nuanced material isn’t mixed in. This is where the talented comedy group Last Call Cleveland appears to be mired.…
Sonic Youth
You don’t need to hear Sonic Youth to like them. In fact, the less you hear, the more likable they probably are. Since the band’s inception in 1981, its New York City, post-punk-rock story has been an inspirational tale: a group of young misfits who defied convention to make “experimental music” on their own terms…
Tick, Tick . . . Thud
“Everyone we know wants to do something else.” That’s a common state of affairs for people in their twenties, trying to balance their dreams with the pressures to pay rent, buy a car, and have enough left for an iPod. That’s also the situation Jonathan finds himself in as the lead character in Tick, Tick…
Candiria
In 2002, the members of Candiria were all nearly killed in a horrific van accident. Worse yet, their muscular brand of hardcore (mixed with hip-hop and jazz fusion) has been overshadowed by screamo acts whining about the girls who dumped them on prom night. So a return as triumphant as the band’s latest, What Doesn’t…
On Stage
Guys and Dolls — One of the most treasured American musicals of all time, Guys and Dolls can fall flatter than a beat cop’s arches if the production doesn’t have an appreciation for its indelible characters. Happily, this is what Porthouse Theatre and artistic director Terri Kent do best; their attention to performance detail and…
Sahara Hotnights
On their last album, 2002’s Jennie Bomb, Sahara Hotnights were a badass girl gang, switchblade sisters whose game plan was summed up by “Alright, Alright (Here’s My Fist Where’s the Fight?)” and its two minutes of sweaty swagger. Basically, they were everything the Donnas were supposed to be that same year. There was no comparison:…
On View
Carmen Ruiz-Davila: Everywhere and Here — Sex is the key to decoding Carmen Ruiz-Davila’s large-scale, theatrical installations. What at first appears cryptic and cartoonish becomes crystal-clear with the help of the backstory posted on the wall next to each piece. The flamboyant “Juana la Loca (Juana the Crazy)” features a black-and-white-tiled floor and giant castanets…
Super Furry Animals
Like the Welsh language itself, there’s something slightly off about Wales’s Super Furry Animals. This remix collection of songs from SFA’s sixth album, the candy-coated psych-pop opus Phantom Power (2003), only exacerbates their innate goofiness. That album’s amiable orchestrations benefit from the distinctive jolts of creativity that this motley crew of hip-hoppers, electronicists, indie rockers,…
Tapas Dancing
What has 400 heads, 800 legs, and sways softly, if a bit unsteadily, to a cool Brazilian beat? If you guessed the crowd at Bossa Nova, Woodmere’s stylish new nightspot, grab yourself a martini. In fact, start a tab: It may turn out to be a long but amusing night. Open since mid-May, the 7,000-square-foot…
The Electras
If you’re looking for a reissue of a rare ’60s garage-rock record, there are about 10,000 better than this. Only this one has Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry on it. Hence an original vinyl version of this album recently went for $2,500 on eBay. Musically, the Electras were just another bunch of suburban teens killing…
In the Dough
Whether we’re rushing in for an early-morning muffin, meeting a friend for tea and scones, or picking up a sturdy loaf of bread for dinner, there’s something ineffably satisfying about visiting a neighborhood bakery. Thus, the envy we feel toward our East Side neighbors since the recent arrival of The Stone Oven bakery and café…
Metallica
Metallica’s latest mostly live disc, an eight-song EP that coincides with a just-released documentary by the same name, is the band’s weakest release to date. Considering that playing live helped the act earn its iconic status, Some Kind of Monster should have been a slam dunk, yet it falls completely flat. The band mangles its…
Kiss the Toad Goodbye
Glen Phillips wasn’t old enough to drive when he joined Toad the Wet Sprocket. Five years later the band’s third album, Fear, went platinum on the strength of heavy MTV rotation and the massive single “All I Want.” It seemed as if Toad, fronted by Phillips’s romantic lyrics and sensitive, falsetto-tinged crooning, became in the…
KRS-One
Mr. Knowledge Reigns Supreme Over Nearly Everyone isn’t just any indie-label rapper. This 1986 new-school graduate has become certifiably old-school as he nears his 20th anniversary as a professional MC. Having renounced the criminal path after his DJ, Scott La Rock, was senselessly murdered 17 years ago, KRS has blazed the trail of conscious hip-hop…
Fab Four Horsemen
Unlikely but true: The Beatles and Metallica have plenty in common. Both had remarkably long hair for their time. Both quickly grew from nightclub cover bands to stadium-sized sensations, bringing their style of music to unprecedented numbers of fans. Both had infamous tastes for intoxicants. And both suffer from a weakness that’s beyond their control:…
Caligula
Just when you thought that metal-hardcore crossover had been strip-mined to exhaustion, Caligula crawls out of the Flats, swinging a big piece of metallic punk at your head, screaming for blood like it’s a new-school zombie that hasn’t lost a step, in spite of the fatal damage it’s taken. After two years in the Cleveland…
Burn, Baby, Burn
In Walter Mosley’s Los Angeles, everything is black and white. You’re either a good guy or a bad guy. You’re either with the hero or against him. And you’re either Caucasian or African American. In his latest book, Little Scarlet, Mosley takes the black-and-white streets of 1965 Los Angeles and colors them red with fire.…
The Ultimate Rock Fantasy
Behold, underachieving, internet-surfing cubicle-dweller of corporate America: Your next great workplace distraction awaits. For we have invented it: Fantasy Rock Stars. Fantasy Rock Stars aims to combine two of modern society’s most debilitating obsessions — celebrity worship and fantasy sports — into one fabulous national pastime. For the uninitiated, the latter involves rounding up 8…
Barry Ross
Just what audience Barry Ross is after is not clear. Unless it’s to expose fans of contemporary Christian fare to a highly diverse selection of oldies, the mix of tunes on this disc by the West Side singer-keyboardist-engineer-producer offers no solid clues. Laced with Christian songs, The Solution Under Cover is primarily synthesized Spector- and…
Kids From Philly
THU 8/5 Two years ago, Marah sold out. The rootsy Americana band from Philadelphia — led by brothers Dave and Serge Bielanko, championed by writer Nick Hornby, and pals with Bruce Springsteen — packed up the accordions, banjos, and harmonicas that guided its 2000 slice of street life, Kids in Philly, and went to hell.…
Mushroomheadaches?
Mushroomhead’s crew is speckled with paint, as if they’ve just gotten into a shoving match with Sherwin-Williams. Stepladders and plywood are strewn about the band’s North Royalton compound, a door lies off its hinges, a steel sink sits out back. The place is being renovated, now that the band is opening its recording studio to…
Truth Makers
Michael Ferrante was climbing into his pickup when a man roared up in an unmarked car, drew a pistol, and ordered him to surrender. He was near the corner of East 149th Street and Lytton Avenue in Collinwood, a neighborhood of sagging duplexes and boarded-up apartment buildings, and his wife was sitting in the truck’s…
Fields of Green
SUN 8/8 Jim Coyne’s days on the gridiron are pretty much over. Lately he’s been on the sidelines, coaching St. Jarlath’s, the team favored to win the Midwest Gaelic Athletic Association Championship against the Detroit Wolftones on Sunday. “The bigger and faster player is the ideal,” says Coyne, who compares Gaelic football to soccer and…
Third Wish, One Night
Third Wish, Scene’s 1998 Regional Rock Band of the Year, is reuniting for a “one-night-only reunion tour.” The band will play its first set in six years Saturday, August 7, at the Phantasy Nite Club (11802 Detroit Avenue, Lakewood), returning to the place that helped launch the alternative roots rockers from a local sensation to…
No Phony Dude
No Phony Dude David Allan Coe frees his mind: Your recent article comparing me to Merle Haggard was uncalled for, full of lies, and total bullshit [Soundbites, July 21]. I’m disappointed in your treatment of me, a native Ohioan. To have stayed out of prison since 1967 and to have accomplished all I have accomplished…
