Bear Tidings
As the joys shared by proud parents go, having your son portray a little-girl bear doesn’t top most lists. But then there is Josh Quincey, the puppeteer who brings life to Ojo, a star of the nationally touring show Bear in the Big Blue House Live: Surprise Party. Mom, in fact, is pretty thrilled. “She’s…
Postman Blues
Neither snow nor rain nor crotchety postmasters could keep Travis Haddix from delivering the blues. For more than a decade, the mailman-musician has recorded extensively, toured the U.S. and Europe, and had his songs covered by better-known bluesmen. The personable singer-guitarist-bandleader has amassed this respectable résumé doing what few musicians could: raising a family and…
Scenes From a Mall
12/18-12/28 The curtain’s about to go up, and someone’s kidnapped the sacred star of the show. That’s the premise of When the Oldest Baby Jesus Got Lost, the holiday tale performed by Karamu Youth Theatre. The play revolves around a school choir’s Christmas pageant at a shopping mall. Thinking she’s doing her classmates a favor,…
Bastard Sons of Brian Eno
In the beginning, there was Brian Eno. And he created Music for Airports, an incredibly soft, incredibly slow album that had more silence than music and more atmosphere than song structure. It gave 1978’s nascent yuppies something to listen to as they came down from their manic coke binges, and it was good. That album…
Skate Date
SUN 12/21 For 17 years since Glyn Watts cashed in his professional ice-dancing career to coach, he’s been grooming Olympic hopefuls here in Northeast Ohio. His latest group shows off their sit-spins and triple-jumps at Holiday Fantasy on Ice, a skating exhibition starring 1984 Olympic silver medalist Rosalynn Sumners and about 150 of Watts’ students.…
Good to Be Ripper
The handwriting was on the wall last summer, and it was scrawled in Tim Owens’s penmanship. Slow sales of Judas Priest’s two albums featuring the Akron singer on vocals had fueled talk of a return to the band’s classic lineup. That would mean the boot for Owens and the reinstatement of estranged frontman Rob Halford,…
Brass Chuckles
SAT 12/20 The Christmas Brass Quintet blows new life into the holiday classics at its performance this Saturday. The five Santa-hatted players, all members of the Cleveland Orchestra, will play such standards as “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” “White Christmas,” and “The 12 Days of Christmas” — which gets a particularly unique interpretation. “They end up…
Pill Swapping
The futuristic Lakewood club Capsule has changed ownership, in the process revamping as a cyber bar and coffeehouse by day and a haven for eclectic, DJ-driven events by night. “The idea is that you can transcend the bar and be anyplace in the world,” says new owner Cathryn Sunday, who bought Capsule from Madison Village…
Rankin’ the Rankin
11/21 — 11/25 It’s not about the presents. Or family, or Jesus. Christmas is really about Rankin-Bass’s timeless seasonal specials. Here’s a look at the animation studio’s Top Five: 1. Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer — R-B’s first outing remains the standard by which holiday TV is judged. Features a resonant message of tolerance in the…
Robert Lockwood Jr.
Since the world rediscovered Robert Lockwood Jr. in the early ’70s, he’s traveled that world extensively. Seen most often in town with a full band, he’s different on tour. When in Spain or Japan or wherever, Lockwood performs as a two-piece with his longtime friend and bassist Gene Schwartz. It’s more than economics: What packs…
Plum Dandies
12/20-12/21 Leave it to the North Coast Men’s Chorus to make the holidays merry and gay. In their Nutcracker adaptation Sugar Plum Fairies, 18 guys pirouette in tights and tulle. “One guy is going to actually dance en pointe, and they’re putting these boys in tutus!” says Steve Louzos, a baritone in the all-gay chorus.…
The Party of Helicopters
Do you suspect your indie/emo/hardcore band is enjoying a meteoric spike in popularity primarily due to your goddamn virtuoso guitarist? You’ve dialed the right hotline. Dave Knudson’s so-fresh/so-clean finger-tapping enriches Minus the Bear’s plaintive purr, but may ultimately typecast the quintet; on the flipside, only Teppei Teranishi’s lush glam licks vault Thrice a few notches…
New Year’s Eve Guide
What’s it going to be? Whether you want dinner, a party, or just a night of music, you’ve got no excuses for missing the fun this New Year’s Eve. From east to west, downtown Cleveland to downtown Akron, the celebrations are plentiful throughout Northeast Ohio. Pick the one that’s right for you, then get some…
The Kinsey Report
Whatever Donald Kinsey didn’t learn about soul by way of Mississippi, Memphis, or Gary, Indiana, he picked up in Jamaica. The leader and lead guitarist of the Kinsey Report boasts a prime pedigree and connections to legends from both the blues and reggae worlds. Along with brothers Kenneth on bass and Ralph on drums, he’s…
Upper Middle Earth
You know how it’s often the ones we love whose flaws are most apparent? Well, when it comes to The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, I am smitten. This film is a miracle, an extravaganza equal to its predecessors and in some ways more stunning. It is a profound testament to…
Seb Fontaine
When DJs release double-disc comps on labels like Perfecto (run by gazillionaire jock Paul Oakenfold), spin on tourist-magnet islands like Ibiza, host shows on BBC Radio 1, or participate in high-selling mix-CD series like Global Underground, they become brand names, franchises whose products are reliable and utterly without surprises. And you have to admit there’s…
Lucky in Love
William H. Macy’s plain-vanilla features and hang-dog screen demeanor have served him well. Who could resist him as the clueless car dealer who hatched the disastrous kidnapping plot in Fargo, or as the distraught husband of a frisky porn star in Boogie Nights? A splendid character actor with a gift for the telling gesture and…
Chimaira
Though some 6,000 miles separate the hometowns of Cleveland metal stalwarts Chimaira and Swedish thrashers Soilwork, there’s much less distance between the two bands’ record collections. Both groups excel at making savage underground metal that’s palatable to a broader audience while still maintaining the ferocity that appeals to diehards. For Soilwork, this means wedding the…
The Mouth that Pours
When Margaret Wong paused to look back at the year 2000, the view was pleasing. The city’s most celebrated immigration attorney had attended the Democratic National Convention as an alternate delegate. The university law schools at Case Western Reserve and Cleveland State had asked her to sit on their boards. She became the first Asian…
Barely Passing
The Mona Lisa Smile in question belongs, of course, to its star, Julia Roberts. Why? For no particular reason, actually. It’s just what Italian professor Bill Dunbar (Dominic West) calls her — Mona Lisa — perhaps because he’s an Italian professor possessing few points of reference outside the works of da Vinci. But the filmmakers,…
Trans-Siberian Orchestra
Before Metallica recorded Live S&M with a full orchestra, Trans-Siberian Orchestra was already breaking new ground in the name of metal. Metal also-also-ran Savatage was running out of Judas Priest material to emulate by 1986, so the band connected with producer Paul O’Neill, who steered it in a prog-rock direction that led to 1995’s Dead…
City on the Brink
As government stability goes, the city of Eastlake lies somewhere between Cleveland and Baghdad. The natives aren’t rioting, but they’re awfully restless. Mayor Dan DiLiberto built a minor-league baseball stadium last spring. Now he’s laying off city workers en masse. He promised not to raise taxes. Today he’s begging citizens to approve a levy. He…
God Bless America
Sorrow sprouts wings and flies in Jim Sheridan’s radiant new film In America, which pits the pain and grief of unimaginable loss against the resilience of the human heart. In this semiautobiographical tale from the writer-director of My Left Foot and In the Name of the Father, a working-class Irish family comes to America in…
Memphis Bleek/Raekwon
Over the past decade, hip-hop has gone from admiring the mob families of fiction and fact to openly emulating their thicker-than-water ties. Now, more than ever, it’s not what you know but whose label you’re on and who has your back — on wax, if not in the street. The point is perhaps best illustrated…
A Holiday Guide To Downtown Panhandlers
In his khaki waistcoat and blue trucker’s hat, Jo-Jo, pacing pensively on Ontario across from Key Tower, is just another panhandler having an average day. Cops and lawyers, bankers and accountants — they all converge on Tower City about lunch time, and Jo-Jo doesn’t mind asking them for a few dimes. He could have a…
Dream’s Alive
There’s a marvelous vibe coming out of Beck Center in Lakewood these days, and it’s powered by a combination of risk-taking, artistic excellence and a commitment to diverse theatrical experiences. Let’s face it, there aren’t many theaters either interested in or capable of simultaneously mounting the following three productions: a gigantic family-friendly musical based on…
Robert Plant
There’s some godawful stuff on this double CD, the first anthology of Zeppelin throat Robert Plant. Among the most embarrassing tracks: “Upside Down,” a later effort, never before committed to CD, that should have remained unreleased; an unhinged, barely listenable take on Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth”; and “Our Song,” an early track that…
Letters to the Editor
History Is No Excuse Keep blackface out of our faces: When I read Darren Keast’s article about the minstrel shows [“The Real Shock Rock,” November 19], the word survival comes to mind. White men mocking African American slaves surviving in a cruel land. Imagine living in a world that will punish or kill you if…
Hell on Wheels
When folks visit during the holidays, they’ll bring food to share, and inevitably there will be an item that tastes as awful as it looks. But you’ll smile and endure, knowing it’s the thought that counts. Well, the good people at Playhouse Square Center fling open their doors to greet touring shows, and the concoctions…
Viggo Mortensen
Many will recognize Viggo Mortensen as the intrepid, benevolent Aragorn from the live-action cinematic adaptation of The Lord of the Rings, in particular The Return of the King, which opens December 17. Mortensen is a delightful rarity — poet, painter, publisher, photographer — a major-league movie star who also happens to be an underground multimedia…
Thar They Blow
By this time of year, it gets a little uncomfortable being a member of the esteemed Canadian Brass. “When we’re at the hotels, we hear music piped through the speakers,” explains trumpet-player Joe Burgstaller. “Eighty percent of the Christmas music we hear is brass music. And 95 percent of that is us.” Such are the…
Two Outta Three Ain’t Bad
For the baby boomer dreaming of her childhood . . . for the nursery gourmet searching for a simple, home-cooked meal . . . or even for the Gen Xer hoping to figure out, once and for all, what’s up with all this nostalgia crap, allow us to introduce the Park City Diner, developer-restaurateur Frank…
Al Green
Al Green’s first secular album since 1995’s Your Heart’s in Good Hands effectively revisits the style of his 1970-’73 Hi Records commercial and artistic peak. The new work is a spirited synthesis of slightly rough-hewn, gospel-inspired Memphis groove, with a pronounced backbeat and the lush strings and production of the sleeker soul variants that once…
Ratners take on New York
It appears that Cleveland’s favorite welfare queens, the Ratners, are up to their old tricks, this time in Brooklyn. Last week, with rapper Jay-Z and New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg by his side, family scion Bruce Ratner unveiled plans for a new neighborhood of shops and condos, all centered on a basketball arena that,…
Comfort and Joy
Abioethicist by training — but a restaurant insider by experience — Michelle Campoir has become the catalyst behind a grass-roots effort to deliver holiday cheer to dozens of local disadvantaged families. Campoir, who holds a master’s degree in medical ethics, recently accepted a position as senior research assistant at CWRU’s Mandel School of Applied Social…
Furnace St.
Since 1998, ’80s-influenced Furnace St. has emerged as Cleveland’s answer to late-era Depeche Mode. Respected but not particularly renowned, the duo attracted an assortment of national and local electronica talent to assemble People, an album of reworked tracks from 2002’s Headmusic LP. Remixes, however, are really only significant in hip-hop, where the process effectively creates…
This Week’s Day-By-Day Picks
Thursday, December 18 Trenton Doyle Hancock’s site-specific work Moments in Mound History is the multimedia artist’s metaphorical battle against something he calls “the Mound” — a beast that’s part animal, part vegetable. Really, it’s just an excuse to explore various cultural and elemental aspects of Hancock’s life, using wallpaper, watercolors, drawings, etchings, and paintings. He’s…
Drama Kings
It was when Frank Zappa died, in the winter of 1993, that Dan Folino first realized he was different. “I was in the seventh grade, and I was totally depressed,” he recalls. “I went to school and the teacher said, ‘Hey, what’s wrong?'” “Frank Zappa died today,” said Dan. “And everybody in the entire class…
The JiMiller Band
The strength of the Jimiller Band lies in its successful crossbreeding of jam-band and singer-songwriter aesthetics. Either can be the focus on any given tune and, much of the time, they alternate. Lead guitarist and vocalist Jim Miller is a tunesmith and player of varied coloration. This double disc set, representing a pair of live…
