Gehry Glitter
When Kim Cameron was named Case Western Reserve University’s business school dean in 1998, he inherited a shortfall. The Weatherhead School of Management had raised $34.6 million to construct a $40 million building to be designed by Frank O. Gehry. It was up to Cameron to make up the difference. No problem, he thought. Raising…
The Isley Brothers Featuring Ronald Isley a.k.a. Mr. Biggs
Five things you should know about the new Isley Brothers album, the Cincinnati group’s first in five years: 1. Smooth crooner Ronald Isley wants to be known as Mr. Biggs these days. 2. Little brother Ernie Isley still wants to be Jimi Hendrix. Ernie, who joined the group at the end of the ’60s, continues…
Inflated Hopes
Early Sunday evening, the Candyman stakes out a shady spot at Glenview Park. He wears an enormous straw hat and pushes a grocery cart overflowing with bubble gum and Laffy Taffy. He sells cans of pop out of a picnic cooler for 50 cents. His real name is Ronald. It’s a hot night, so he…
The White Stripes
While De Stijl, last year’s offering from the suddenly hot White Stripes, revealed the Detroit group’s affinity for sweet and subtle melodies, it was hardly a surrender to hushed pop tones. Having hit their mark spectacularly with an abrasive, assaulting, and howling debut (1999’s The White Stripes), the duo seemed tame in comparison on De…
Passing the Plate
State Representative Ron Young believes his bill is harmless enough. He wants Ohio to issue commemorative license plates embossed with the phrase “Choose Life.” “I think it’s good that we can introduce positive messages into a culture that sorely needs them these days,” says the Painesville Republican. “It seems to me a life-affirming, upbeat message.”…
Integrity
In the liner notes to this compilation, Victory Records owner Tony Brummel gives a glowing assessment of Integrity’s history. The Cleveland band “truly changed the face of hardcore punk music, adding elements of evil, danger, mystery, chaos, and adrenaline-induced extremism,” he writes. There are also comments from a fan, simply identified as Clint, who writes…
Dust to Dust
Ten years ago, Robert Harris picked up the phone to find on the other end a relative stranger bearing extraordinary news. This man was at a film exchange in Toronto, where movies are housed and rented out to exhibitors, and he was holding in his hands canisters of film containing what Harris considered something akin…
Straying Off-Base
Eastlake should stick to what it does well After reading about Eastlake and its proposed baseball stadium [“The Mistake in Eastlake?”, July 12], my only thought is that I’m thrilled I don’t live there. There is obviously something in the water, and the only one who hasn’t been drinking it is Councilman Stephen Komarjanski. Thankfully,…
Love in Bloomers
With Goblin Market, Cain Park is atoning for the crass commercialism and wholesome excess of its recent Sound of Music production. Making a return engagement after 10 years in musical reform school, this strange and eccentric theatrical aberration leaves glazed-over audiences suspecting that some deviant has been slipping opium into their drinks. Fashioned as a…
Where the Wild Things Aren’t
The fierce, man-eating jackalope, indigenous to our western states, gets the blame for everything from the unexplained disappearance of Texas tourists to the development of Kansas’s killer tornadoes. Most of the time, the story goes, the furry feller moves too fast to be seen with the naked eye, but he can be successfully lured into…
High on the Hogs
The lucky little porkers marketed by northern California’s Niman Ranch frolic in the sunlight, raise their babies the old-fashioned way, and dine on only the finest grains, all without ever seeing crates, hormones, or antibiotics. Not surprising, then, these heirloom hogs taste heavenly — succulent, moist, and bursting with deep, rich flavor. That’s why Niman’s…
Garage Sailing
A recent article in Entertainment Weekly asked, “Will garage rock be music’s next big thing?” It went on to give a history of the genre, citing the Kingsmen’s “Louie Louie” and ? & the Mysterians’ “96 Tears” in the process. The article also mentioned the reissue of the expanded Nuggets collection of great “garage singles”…
Canned Corn
The bucolic majesty of the festival beauty queen is one of small-town America’s enduring pleasures. But not in North Ridgeville, where Corn Queens had been crowned since the 1979 Corn Festival. Over the years, the rigors of suburban royalty had taken their toll, and the city threw flowers at the feet of its last Corn…
Urban Bright
Long before Jill Scott put her words into a musical context, she was making some noise as a respected poet in the Philadelphia area, where she co-founded and hosted Words and Sounds, a popular performance series that showcased local talent. At one of these readings, Scott caught the attention of Roots drummer Ahmir Thompson and…
Dough and Aeros
It is, of course, a sin to speak ill of the Tribe. But at the risk of blasphemy, there’s something unsettling about paying 20 bucks a seat to sit in right field and root for John Rocker — in a joint that serves sushi, no less. That’s why Ben Cook has come to Akron’s Canal…
Hogging the Covers
Two of the first people we meet in An Incredible Simulation, a documentary about tribute bands, are a married couple. He’s a sideburned, sequined crooner who does Neil Diamond impersonations; she’s a pasty, slightly overweight chanteuse who puts on one-woman ABBA shows. Together, they’re “Lightning and Thunder,” and they’ve mastered the art of singing to…
Churl Power
Festering somewhere between an after-school special and kiddie porn lies this frank but heinously melodramatic open wound from veteran Canadian director Léa Pool (Emporte-moi). Adapted by screenwriter Judith Thompson from the novel The Wives of Bath by Susan Swan, Lost and Delirious is about girl joy and girl sorrow, girl solidarity and girl insatiability. In…
Yes
Formed three decades ago by squeaky-voiced singer Jon Anderson and bassist Chris Squire, Yes challenged pop audiences with cosmic themes and an innovative progressive-rock sound. Virtuoso guitarist Steve Howe’s fluid jazz- and bluegrass-tinged melodies complemented Squire’s trebly bass lines and drummer Alan White’s monstrous cadences. Keyboard whiz Rick Wakeman defected from the Strawbs just in…
Other Voices, Other Dooms
It was about two years ago that there was real hope for horror movies to come due once again for a decent revival. The Blair Witch Project made people fear the unknown, and remakes of The Haunting and House on Haunted Hill promised a return to the good old days of creepy mansions. Sadly, Blair…
Bill Wyman’s Rhythm Kings
Back when Bill Wyman was the bassist for the Rolling Stones (he officially left the band in 1993), he refused even then to play to the stereotype of silent, stoic member of the rhythm section. Unlike many of his stone-faced and rigidly bound bass-playing peers, Wyman was nearly as flamboyant as the spotlight-consuming Glimmer Twins…
Get a Piece
For a few moments, American Pie 2 tastes every bit as stale as junk food left out on the countertop for two years. “Just like old times,” says one actor to another as they amble through settings borrowed from the first installment of 1999’s Last American Virgin revisit: Jim’s bedroom, Stifler’s house (again, in debauched…
R. Kelly
The most moving song on TP-2.com, the latest album from R. Kelly, is “I Wish,” yet another elegy to a dead homey that Kelly manages to make real through a series of personal recollections and a climactic gospel choir. Yet the album’s most enticing track is “A Woman’s Threat,” in which our masculine hero takes…
Deep Throat
During this cinematic Summer of Dumb, it would be all too easy to celebrate half-assed cleverness as a virtue, especially when proffered by Bobby and Peter Farrelly, who elevated the gross-out to an art form in Kingpin and There’s Something About Mary. Osmosis Jones, one of two films the Booger Brothers are offering this year,…
Toots & the Maytals
Frederick “Toots” Hibbert and the Maytals (backing singers Raleigh Gordon and Jerry Mathias) recorded “Do the Reggay” in 1968, unwittingly giving an official handle to a Jamaican hybrid of calypso and R&B previously called ska or rock steady. Hibbert was a country boy who moved to Kingston in the late ’50s, living in the ghetto…
Con Man of the Year
Clayton Krcal’s lucrative career as a con man looked headed for an extended hiatus. He was caught in the act of his greatest scam — collecting $350,000 for the sale of property he didn’t own — and thrown into the Cuyahoga County Jail. Krcal had spent a lifetime swindling. Now he was locked away in…
The Dream Syndicate / Steve Wynn
One of the highest expressions of new wave is the first full-length album by the Dream Syndicate, a Los Angeles band that flashed across the rock firmament from 1981 to 1984, only to sputter on until its 1989 breakup. Rhino’s reissue of its 1982 benchmark, Days of Wine and Roses, proves how powerful singer-guitarist Steve…
