Girl Problems
If you already know that males and females employ different strategies for relieving themselves of liquid waste, you’re in for no surprises in Rob Schneider’s latest look-at-me-I’m-so-cute comedy, The Hot Chick. Every few minutes, a dumb pee-pee gag rears its head, usually as Schneider bumbles around half-clad in what appear to be Christina Aguilera’s Goodwill…
Boxcar Racer
“We still write songs about fucking pigs and dogs, but that’s just something we do on the side,” Blink-182 singer-guitarist Tom Delonge told us around this time last year. “I think 90 percent of what we do is serious.” Indeed, the title of Blink’s last one, Take Off Your Pants and Jacket, was about the…
Jenny From the Crock
Maid in Manhattan, in which Jennifer Lopez goes from pauper to princess, comes not from a screenplay, but from a handful of self-help books and fairy tales and fashion magazines cut and pasted together in a glossy montage committed to celluloid. Characters, made from the highest-grade cardboard and resplendent in the latest Dolce & Gabbana…
Joe Bonamassa
The title “child prodigy” has more often been a curse than a blessing. But guitarist extraordinaire Joe Bonamassa has managed to grow comfortably into that appellation — even after being hailed by B.B. King as “a legend before his time” at age 12. Now 25 and a grizzled veteran of the small-club circuit as former…
Daze of Christmas
Here’s your holiday lesson for this year, kiddies: Write a review the Cleveland Play House brass doesn’t like and they’ll jam a flaming yule log up your holly wreath. Arriving for the opening night of A Tuna Christmas was like walking into Christmas dinner just as volatile Uncle Peter dumps the punch bowl of eggnog…
Mariah Carey / Jennifer Lopez
Mariah Carey and Jennifer Lopez are two-of-a-kind polar opposites. Marketed as bronze bombshells, they’ve crossed freely between black and white pop realms like few other stars. Their bastardized African American music has been partly legitimized, perhaps, by their mixed-race status (Carey is a bit of everything; Lopez is pure Puerto Rican, which is to say…
End of the Road
Notes from a network executive’s forthcoming biography, pilfered from the desk of an editor at a major publishing house. This was hard to read, as it was scribbled in crayon on the back of a copy of Highlights taken from a pediatrician’s office. From page 412: “Last week, I met Jim Belushi, whose brother was…
The Roots
In their decade-plus as one of hip-hop’s most consistently brilliant outfits, Philadelphia’s Roots have received far too much attention for being (gasp!) an actual band and far too little for the fact that they’re a really damn good band. And now, with Phrenology, Illadelph’s finest stake a claim as much, much more. Buoyed throughout by…
Super Fly
Back in 1994, Eminem was merely a candy, 45-year-old George Foreman became the oldest man to snare a heavyweight boxing title, and former President Richard Nixon caught the last train to the big White House in the sky. Meanwhile, on the local dining scene, formal Continental-style restaurants like Classics and the Riverview Room still held…
Ted Nugent
This is Ted Nugent’s best album in 20 years. Craveman’s tracks each sound as if they were recorded in a single take, with some guitar overdubs coming the next afternoon, after six pots of coffee. Nugent is in top form here, returning his music to its blues-rock/R&B roots, with simple (but not simplistic) three-chord anthems…
Getting Your Jollies
There’s more to the holidays than stale fruitcake, TV reruns, and burdensome in-laws, you know. There’s food and drink, too. After relatively unproductive hours spent tossing tinsel at the tree or scouring the mall for something — anything — that Mom doesn’t already have, we seriously need a break. That’s when we don our gay…
Metro Area
Metro Area transports listeners to an alternate universe, where the lush sounds of Salsoul and Prelude were never overpowered by the harder sounds of hip-hop and breakbeat. Instead, they pick up where Prince and Paul Simpson left off in the mid-’80s, crafting 21st-century disco with just enough modern flair to not be discounted as retro…
Bitter Pill
“‘N Sync is one of the most popular bands on the planet. How does that happen in a free society, for fuck’s sake?” fumes Slipknot vocalist Corey Taylor. Even though his other band, Stone Sour — which makes its Cleveland debut this Friday — released a ballad as its first single, Taylor is plenty pissed…
Jaded Era
Why did Avril Lavigne have to go and make things so complicated? Though fast-rising Jaded Era has been making the rounds with its plush, whip-smart rock longer than the pop-turned-punk Lavigne, her success could make this band look like a bunch of opportunists to those who don’t know better. Let’s hope that’s not the case,…
Reeling in the Beers
When Brent Best laughs, it sounds like the slide racking on a shotgun. Sounds that way when he coughs, and sometimes when he sings. It’s a little worse than usual right now; he and his band, Slobberbone, were on the road in Europe for a few weeks and have been home for only a few…
Various Artists
To borrow a line from Strapping Young Lad, this mostly-locals compilation is as heavy as a really heavy thing. N.D.E. provides an early highlight with “III Day Grip,” a shot of malevolent, Exhorder-style thrash. Sofa King Killer reps Kent well with the caustic “Fearless Shadow,” a venomous ripper that’s equal parts Eyehategod and battery acid.…
Taking Out the Trash
“American music magazines suck.” Rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it? These days, it’s rolling off everyone’s. Saunter down the length of a magazine rack and scowl at the teen-pop hoochie starlets, the drooling trend worship (“The Strokes! The Hives! The White Stripes!”), the outrageously vapid rock star puff pieces, the gutless CD reviews. No innovation.…
Chuck’s Last Stand
He doesn’t look like a slumlord. Neat and soft-spoken behind his wire-rim glasses, Chuck Minadeo seems perpetually befuddled, the clueless substitute teacher who can’t understand why the kids are picking on him. Even critics describe him as “nice,” as in “He seems like a nice gentleman.” But they loathe him just the same. Comments about…
Keep It Kenny G-Free
Most holiday music blows like the winds of a nor’easter. Every year, the usual suspects parade their awful smooth jazz and watered-down Yuletide pop, but rather than pick on Kenny G again (it’s like cold-cocking an eight-year-old), we’d like to share some of the holiday albums we most enjoy. Forget Rosie O’Donnell and Dave Koz;…
Capitol Idea
So there’s these guys with a mutual problem of their own making. It’s a complex problem, one that’s going to cost to fix. But these are big, strong, monied guys with a lot of pull. Why accept responsibility if you don’t have to? Better to find a patsy, a guy who can’t punch back. And…
Hurts So Good
It was short and not so sweet, but Amps II Eleven’s recent debut at the Revolution was almost as impressive as the uninterrupted stream of epithets that bassist Tony Erba let loose. Playing an abbreviated half-hour set, the former Stepsister, along with new vocalist Matt Wroth and drummer Steve Callahan, truly kicked out the jams…
Mastermind or Moron?
By the time Tonica Jenkins was arrested last year, on kidnapping and attempted aggravated murder charges, she was already notorious. Three years before, she’d forged her own college transcripts, faked letters of recommendation, and gotten herself admitted to Yale. Her exploits were noted in The New York Times, her name was bandied about in Cosmopolitan.…
Andy Pratt
Remember “Avenging Annie,” the cult hit that peaked at No. 55 on the charts in the summer of 1973? If you do, you are undoubtedly either a native of Boston, a city that once had a really cool free-form radio station, or the kind of person who used to hang on every word written by…
Rating Season
This issue will feature no 5,000-word epistle on the Malfeasance of the Week. Frankly, that’s too damn much work. Instead, we decided to steal an idea previously stolen by everyone from American Heritage to Sports Illustrated: the overrated/underrated motif. Now cynics might say we’re simply trying to skate around real work during the holiday season.…
Insane Clown Posse
It’s best to compare Insane Clown Posse only to itself. To judge the outfit within the context of contemporary rap will lead to only one conclusion: The Posse sucks. Heck, they hardly even have any real songs. What ICP excels at is telling jokes and stories, and merchandising itself at a level that would make…
Three Wombs for Dr. Sogor
All OB/GYNs face lawsuits: I find it reprehensible that Sarah Fenske has chosen to call into question the competency of Dr. Laszlo Sogor [“The Forceps Affair,” November 13]. While I appreciate the tremendous grief these two families must bear, every physician knows — and is ethically and legally bound to inform his patients — that…
Billy Joe Shaver
With vocals that range in tone from reflective to yearning to shattering, country icon Billy Joe Shaver offers a private, healing message to his listeners. And the singer, who calls himself a “lowlife loser,” is all the more affecting after having been to hell and back: In the space of just two years, Shaver lost…
You Don’t Know Dick
Dick Goddard’s Almanac for Northeast Ohio 2003 is filled with disposable facts. Did you know that Ohio has the only state flag that’s not rectangular? Or that autumn is the worst season for stargazing? As longtime chief meteorologist at WJW-TV 8, Goddard knows his weather. He’s also a local history buff, which explains the copious…
D12
It’s nearly impossible to talk about D12 without mentioning him — Eminem, that is. It’s the curse of every rap clique who, after having an MC break out first, are relegated to being just “the crew.” It’s happened before: Tupac had Thug Life. Biggie Smalls had Junior M.A.F.I.A. And last year, Nelly introduced audiences to…
Musty Smut
Some things never change. Just like the new-millennium porn found in video stores and on pay-per-view, the dirty movies that make up Porn Yesterday: Stag Movies 1915-1950 — a compilation of black-and-white silent shorts from a time when X was just another letter between W and Y — feature techniques (the stationary camera that takes…
Taking Back Sunday/Startingline
Hailing from Amityville, New York — a town known for scenes of slaughter and houses with walls that bleed — Taking Back Sunday may lack terrifying special effects. But its brash live shows have been drawing plenty of screams from emo-punk kids. Lead singer Adam Lazarra’s reputation for frantically flailing about onstage turned the band’s…
