Pleased to Re-Meet Me
Can old people rock? The question is at least half as old as rock and roll itself — and just as deathless, no matter how obvious you consider the answer. Every year, evidence piles up in the negative column, but optimists can cite just enough examples to keep the question open. So, 42-year-old Paul Westerberg:…
Nouveau Womb
At her last anti-abortion rally, Megan Wilson really wanted to give one of her fellow protesters a good whack upside the head with her pro-life placard. All his screaming and carrying on were giving her a killer migraine. There she was, looking fine in a black leather jacket and cat-eye shades, and this social misfit…
Beatlepalooza
We could never be Mick Jagger. Not with those Goodyear lips and that line of models outside the bedroom door. We couldn’t ever really be Elvis either: His hips were pneumatic; ours are more of the hand-pump variety. But we could all be the Beatles. In Ringo Starr’s big schnoz, George Harrison’s introversion, John Lennon’s…
Mr. Molester’s Neighborhood
William Kennedy reclines in his sweltering apartment, flesh sagging from his shirtless, 74-year-old body. He dabs sweat from his brow with brown napkins as a small fan blows a pitiable breeze. He is, to outside appearances, a tired old man who is waiting to die. Yet Cuyahoga County regards him as a danger. So dangerous…
Midwest Reggae Fest
Kids, kites, coolers, grills, girls, and sweet reggae music: The 11th Annual Midwest Reggae Fest sounds almost too good to be true. Past headliners have included Jamaica’s cream of the crop; just the same, a number of those artists have made last-minute cancellations over the years, which seems the likely cause for keeping this year’s…
Bright Lights, Big Suspension
In early 1990, when Cleveland Mayor Michael White unveiled his first cabinet, the announcement was greeted with the sort of slavering praise normally reserved for eulogies and movie advertisements. The Citizens League called it an “all-star” cast. The Plain Dealer cooed. Among the mosh of political loyalists, bureaucratic lifers, and young newcomers who would run…
The A*Teens
Record companies have been manufacturing groups since the days of the Monkees, but at least Mike Nesmith had the balls to threaten bodily harm against “musical supervisor” Don Kirshner unless they were given some artistic control. Not so with the A*Teens, a prefab Swedish teen pop group, whose debut came in the form of an…
The Commissioner’s Racket
Lorain County Commissioner David Moore owes his political career to his business success. Like Ross Perot before him and Mike Bloomberg after, he used his own money to fund his campaign. He also turned his private-sector prosperity into a potent political pitch, arguing that the tenets of business could better guide government — and that…
Hessfest 2002
Though Hessfest won’t hit the road this summer as originally planned, that really shouldn’t matter all that much: The show promises to be loud enough to rattle foundations from here to Toledo anyway. Some big names, like Clutch, Soul Brains, and Poison the Well, have fallen by the wayside, but with the best band from…
99 Percent Pure
Father Don gets the benefit of the doubt: When I read Martin Kuz’s article “Bless Me Father” [July 3], about Father Don Rooney, I was reduced to tears. Finally, someone had the courage to look at both sides, instead of the usual negative one-sided view that has been so prevalent in the press. As a…
Ben Kweller
A natural-born romantic, Ben Kweller boasts a new album, Sha Sha, that bubbles over with the solfège of love — the bop-bops, the do-do do-dos, and the ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-bas that give voice to the heart’s joy and yearning. From piano ballads to acoustic pop to raved-up rockers, there’s a spirited innocence on his album too often…
Throws of Passion
Don’t tell David Boehm that boomerangs are weapons. The founder of the Cleveland Boomerang School has spent years dispelling what he calls “a grave misconception.” There’s proof, he says, that ancient Australians wielded the flying sticks purely for sport. They’re lightweight, limited in where they can fly, and, Boehm facetiously points out, can be used…
Fischerspooner
Art techno or future new wave? In the past year, many buzzwords have surrounded the underground electronic scene, as analog synthesizers and old-school drum machines have become the norm. But the truth is, techno has been steeped in art-school rhetoric since Juan Atkins and Derrick May discovered Alvin Toffler. The entire genre, after all, is…
A Fistful of Monikers
In his new movie Blood Work, Clint Eastwood plays Terry McCaleb, an FBI agent hunting the killer of the woman from whom he received a new heart. And while it’s pretty much a standard role for Eastwood these days, Terry McCaleb is another in a long line of excellently named characters played by the 72-year-old…
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
Bruce Springsteen spent most of the ’90s in an artistic haze. Die-hard fans kept hoping for a return to past greatness after he eliminated the E Street Band and went into a recording tailspin, but it’s safe to bet that not one of those fans would call any album after Tunnel of Love their “favorite…
Thunderbald
In case you didn’t happen to read the tagline on the ubiquitous poster, Xander Cage, also known as XXX because he’s tattooed his first initial three times on the back of his neck, is “a new breed of secret agent.” The old breed, we learn pretty quickly, is Bond, James Bond . . . but…
Bob Marley and the Wailers
People started talking all kinds of mumbo-jumbo about Bob Marley almost before he was cold in the ground. But before he was a conveniently agreed-upon symbol for vague ideas about good times and world peace, he was an uncommonly sharp writer of deceptively simple pop songs. These early singles are frankly stunning documents, imagining pop…
Why Kids 2?
It was inevitable that Spy Kids, so good that Miramax released it twice last year, would spawn a sibling. That movie, as neon-bright as the latest Baskin-Robbins flavor, was dizzyingly kinetic and overstuffed, yet you never felt as though writer-director Robert Rodriguez crammed in all the neato toys and trinkets at his disposal. It was…
Conya Doss
Though Conya Doss’s neo-soul debut couldn’t sound more different from the Black Keys’ blues-rock breakthrough, The Big Come Up, the two are far and away the most exciting local records of the year for surprisingly similar reasons: Not only do they fit snugly into the hottest neotraditional styles going; they distinguish themselves from the national…
Heart to Heart
Blood Work, Clint Eastwood’s 23rd film as director, is another crime thriller in the mode of, but better than, True Crime (1998) and Absolute Power (1996), two of his last three films. More than these, however, it resembles In the Line of Fire (1993), the Eastwood vehicle directed by Wolfgang Petersen. Hero Terry McCaleb is…
Over Easy
Kathryn Wat hustles groups of school kids past a Paul Cadmus painting. The associate curator at the Akron Art Museum doesn’t want calls from angry parents. The shirtless teen in the foreground of “Playground” (1948) stares at the viewer as he thrusts his hands down his unfastened pants, manhandling his bare buttocks. To the left,…
Sternfeld’s Folly
Midsummer theater in Cleveland has become like a weekend in Windsor: an intriguing crapshoot, where sure things turn up as snake eyes and long shots yield unexpected payoffs. Fred Sternfeld’s production of Kaufman and Hart’s The Man Who Came to Dinner, an imperishable ode to our obsession with fame, should have been a safe bet.…
Country Casual
As it winds its way east through Geauga County, Route 322 is a slender ribbon of asphalt, looping in and out of river valleys, threading its way through stands of venerable pines, and bordering broad ditches overflowing with day lilies. Along the way, nurseries, greenhouses, and whimsical garden shoppes are interspersed with tidy little Cape…
Tea House Oodles
Cleveland’s Noodle King, Richard Baribault, struck out with Teaka, his healthy-eating spot in Westgate Mall, but it looks like he’s hit a homer with his second downtown Tea House Noodles location, at 1701 East 12th Street (216-592-0000). The outpost, which opened July 2, is good news for lunch-hour fans who get weary from waiting in…
Roll Over Beethoven
Quick: Name three rock violinists. If you’re a ’60s person, you might remember Jerry Goodman of the Flock, and Jean-Luc Ponty is an obvious choice (though he’s more jazz than rock). But who else is there? Mark O’Connor is primarily country; Nigel Kennedy mainly classical, despite his taste for Hendrix. Scarlet Rivera? Great, but since…
