One Love
It’s Friday night, and the 2,000 miles that separate Peabody’s from the Blue Mountains of Jamaica have gone up in a puff of curious-smelling smoke. The spindly, dreadlocked Carlos Jones is onstage, pounding out a steady rhythm on a large African tom-tom. His eyes are shut. He never once opens them as he plays. It’s…
Parks’s Place
Gordon Parks was a photographer for Life, one of the founders of Essence magazine, author of The Learning Tree (as well as the director of the film adaptation), director of the blaxploitation classic Shaft, and composer of the 1989 ballet Martin. He is also the one who forged a legacy that eloquently depicts the soul,…
Hot to the Touch
Cleveland is not a city known for its thriving dance music scene. Sure, there are plenty of clubs in the Flats and Warehouse District, where local DJs provide a healthy helping of Top 40 house and trance records. But there are few regular events in town where you can hear producers from around the country…
Still Bent on Kent
Thirty-one years ago, Neil Young sang, “What if you knew her and found her dead on the ground?” about the May 4, 1970 killings of four Kent State University students by the Ohio National Guard. Peter Jedick knew her. In fact, he knew both hers. The Cleveland Fire Department lieutenant and KSU graduate (class of…
The War on Eminem
Top contender for Brainless Quote of the Year is the clerk at the Strongsville HMV store, caught on tape last month selling an expletive-laced rap album to a 14-year-old. “I’d sell to a fetus if I could,” he said — into a hidden Channel 3 camera, in a much-publicized exposé. But that gaffe, which resulted…
New Year’s Eve 2001
CLUBS & RESTAURANTS Abbasso/Bottom’s Up: House DJs Travis Owens and Quantum rock in 2002, as guests gorge on an all-you-can-eat gourmet buffet and open bar until 1 a.m. Put on your sexiest outfit and you might win a bottle of Dom Perignon during the “Solid Gold 2” costume contest. Open till 5 a.m.; tickets are…
The Fruit Bats
Early last year, the Washington-state band Modest Mouse took an extended trip to Chicago and made a record with Brian Deck, a central figure in the sprawling Windy City musical family that historically centers on the defunct avant-blues group Red Red Meat. When Modest Mouse headed back to Washington (or to Epic Records’ Santa Monica…
Do the Wrong Thing
Tape, a film by Richard Linklater, isn’t. It’s high time for some cinematic clarification: If a project is shot on celluloid, with light searing images onto emulsion, then it’s a film. If it’s recorded with magnetic frequencies or digital code (as is the case here), then it’s a video. Of course, there are gray areas…
The Cheese Ball
In addition to a Cheese Borger in paradise, there’ll be just about every Cleveland punk band worth mentioning at the Beachland Ballroom this Saturday. To commemorate the release of his Pie and Ears II compilation of Cleveland punk greats past and present, Scott “Cheese” Borger is throwing his second annual blowout bash, featuring a horde…
In the Baggins
Since the horrors of dominator culture — destruction, devastation, dumb-assness — do not appear to be receding of their own accord, there’s great poignancy to the new cinematic adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. The film succeeds as massive, astonishing entertainment; enthralling us is its chief goal.…
Integrity
“It’s kind of an angel-and-devil thing. I want something angelic to go against my screaming. I guess I play the devil.” Dwid, vocalist and mastermind of the pummeling hardcore outfit Integrity, is talking about his concept for the band’s final show. He sounds a little stoned. He keeps hollering to another person in the room…
Capra Corny
Having given us The Shawshank Redemption in 1994 and The Green Mile five years later, director Frank Darabont finally busts his way out of prison with his third feature, The Majestic (which, incidentally, has the worst ad art since Green Mile). Working from a script by Michael Sloane — no Stephen King connection this time…
Jamey Haddad Trio
Jamey Haddad has a dream. Sometimes, the South Euclid native even lives one. “I long to be in one steady group that involves world music aspects and creative art-form jazz music, not necessarily swing,” the drummer-percussionist says, from his Manhattan home. “It’s very difficult to find world music players who know anything about soloing over…
The Chosen One
It’s 7:30 p.m., the night after Thanksgiving, and the lights are dimming inside the Convocation Center. The steady boom, boom, boom of arena-friendly techno music pulses through the building as a cloud of fog rolls across the floor. It is five minutes before game time for the Cleveland Crunch, which lays claim to a unique…
Merzbow
Merzbow is like a friend who breaks something every time he comes over. It’s only a surprise the first time; after that, you have to start wondering why you keep letting it happen. Each of his releases is a white-noise assault on the brain and ears, and therefore it’s easy to conclude that they’re all…
Real Proficiency
Last week, the state Board of Education announced new standards for academic proficiency. Nobody was happy, of course, because nobody likes proficiency tests except legislators and guys who work at think tanks because they can’t get real jobs. The problem lies with the areas of core competency. Science, math, reading, and writing — all make…
Wu-Tang Clan
What makes the Wu-Tang Clan so distinctive is that it embraces confusion in a genre that normally ducks it like the reefer-mad Method Man ducks urine tests. After all, hip-hop has long taken pride in being direct. “I don’t rhyme for the sake of riddlin’,” Public Enemy’s Chuck D spat in the late ’80s, epitomizing…
Reaching for the Sky
Jamie Lebovitz pulls out a thick black book. Titled “Estate of Robert Milne, crash of Swissair,” it tells the life story of a man who died in a 1998 plane crash in Nova Scotia. School records, professional publications, and testimonials are laid out next to family photos. In one, Milne poses with his wife on…
The Velvet Underground
When the Velvet Underground toured the West Coast with Andy Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable back in 1966, the response was underwhelming, to say the least. LSD was still legal in California, and peace, love, and tripping were the watchwords of the day. During the shows, the hippie hordes greeted the arch negativism and lofty artistic…
Members Only
The fancy-condom salesman leans back in his leather chair. The state of New Jersey wants 50,000 units of the best he’s got. His biggest order yet. He adds up some figures in his head, trying to remain unfazed by the prospect of wrapping whackers from Hoboken to Atlantic City. “Let me see what I can…
Sump Pump Monkeys
Surf rock has long posited itself as the John Waters of music genres. Forever infatuated with camp and all things kitschy, the scene’s lifeblood is cultural detritus, from bad sci-fi flicks to wrestling. And while all that may be smirked upon by the highbrows, in truth, it says a lot about us. Namely, that we’re…
Maybe God Took a Day Off?
The other side of the 9-11 debate: I was caught off guard when reading the letter written by a Mr. Mark DeForest titled “God Had a Busy Day” [November 22]. The letter [a response to Derf’s comic “The City,” October 18] made me ask the question “Why would Scene print such bullshit?” This letter is…
Local Hero
Cleveland theater is run on the same principle as Pier 1 Imports. A recent shipment of Radio City Rockettes is ringing up record grosses. Every neighborhood has its own Annie or Scrooge, and in Lakewood, where the mistletoe is laced with sexual ambiguity, the designated Sugar Plum Fairy is a 1998 off-Broadway Teutonic transsexual named…
Talkin’ Tolkien
David Salo’s colleagues and classmates at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have absolutely no idea how he spends his free time. It’s not that the 32-year-old linguistics grad student is ashamed of his hobby (or obsession), which has occupied him for some 26 years. They simply cannot be bothered with it. “Most linguists feel that it’s…
Little Wonder
The anonymous phrasemaker who said, “Good things come in small packages” surely didn’t have in mind Osteria di Valerio & Al. But the intimate little Warehouse District restaurant clearly illustrates the point. Open since June, Osteria (the name means “café”) is the district’s smallest upscale dining room, with no more than a dozen tables augmented…
Steak Out
Don’t hold your breath waiting for Columbus-based M. Cameron Mitchell to open one of his popular steakhouses in Cleveland. Spokesperson Carolyn Delp confirms that the planned outpost, along with several of the multiconcept restaurant group’s other projects, has been delayed indefinitely. Delp says the war in Afghanistan and the faltering economy influenced the decision. “Right…
