Return of the Dinosaurs
The members of Was (Not Was) were the most unlikely pop stars. In 1989, the ad hoc group — led by David Weiss and Don Fagenson, renamed David and Don Was — reached the Top 10 with a playful bit of dance-funk called “Walk the Dinosaur.” A goofy music video, featuring shimmying cavegirls who brought…
Joyful Noise
This job is not a tough one. Listening to records, hanging out with bands, and getting shitfaced at rock shows isn’t as demanding as it sounds. But every year around this time, as we winnow through all the quality releases that came from these parts in the past 12 months to present a short list…
Protect and Serve
12/30-3/31 View the 650 items on display at Cleveland State’s History of Contraception, and you’ll discover that women once used crocodile poop to prevent knocked-up-edness. “People will try any number of things to control fertility,” says curator James Edmonson. “The diversity is impressive.” Artifacts include IUDs and condoms of an earlier time, as well as…
Black Rave New Year’s Ball
Beat 2004 out of your system at the Black Rave New Year’s Ball. Genitorturers front-dominatrix Gen (pictured) headlines the evening, leading her All-Star Damnation Band through electro-fried originals and covers of songs by Billy Idol, Joan Jett, and Judas Priest. Keratoma and Bile will play more high-voltage rock. Mushroomhead’s Stitch will spin industrial music, and…
Rim Shots
THU 12/30 t’s a pretty safe bet that the New York Nationals will lose when they take on the Harlem Globetrotters at Gund Arena on Thursday. After all, the court jesters are celebrating their 80th anniversary next year. That’s a lot of time to perfect those behind-the-back passes and bucket tosses. Their current tour stops…
New Year Bloody Marys
Akron, you had a rough night. Now it’s 2005, and you need to put some nutrients back in your system. Tear-EZ kicks off ’05 with a build-your-own bloody Mary bar and munchies, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. If that’s not your scene — or if you can’t drag your butt out of bed that…
Let the Gaming Begin
12/30-1/5 According to Adam Shannon, the Cold Fusion LAN Center is “light on internet, light on coffee, but heavy on games.” The gaming lounge and internet café has 20 computers and 10 Xbox and PlayStation 2 consoles, all linked to a Local Area Network. If 20 players want to divide into teams, they can battle…
Trend-Spotting
Britney got married. Ashlee was caught lip-synching. ODB died. Congress continued to wring its hands about the legality of downloads, which flourished anyway. Conservative groups condemned sex in popular culture, while Usher’s sultry Confessions shot to No. 1. A major label signed a guy who can’t sing, can’t dance and can’t write for an album…
Pops Goes the New Year
FRI 12/31 The Cleveland Pops Orchestra’s annual New Year’s Eve blowout at Severance Hall isn’t just about the concert, conducted by Carl Topilow (pictured). The ninth annual gathering is also about special guests — like singer Joe Bourne, who’s worked with Ray Charles and Dionne Warwick, and Anne Marie Sivertson, a 15-year-old Shaker Heights vocalist…
God Save the Scene
It’s difficult to survey the hip-hop of 2004, more bloated and self-referential than ever, and not imagine the mythical AOR wasteland of the mid-’70s. Like rock before it, hip-hop has easily won a cultural acceptance once unthinkable, and our reward is a parade of Jadakisses and G-Unit solo projects, preaching empty and ultimately safe rebellion…
From Major to Minor
To understand this most tumultuous year in film, over which loomed the ghost of a blessed messiah and the shadow of an accursed pariah, turn your eyes from the movie screen and look to the bookshelf. There you will find a copy of Peter Biskind’s Down and Dirty Pictures, which became available just 12 days…
Smells Like Indie Spirit
Ever find yourself missing the word “alternative” as a concept, a signifier, a lifestyle? Nowadays, any dudes-with-guitars collective either has to do the Creed butt-rock thing, the whine-incessantly-about-your-ex-girlfriends emo thing, or the get-beat-up-incessantly-by-your-ex-girlfriends indie-rock thing. It’s harder and harder to find the best aspects of each combined: the fist-pumping intensity of the butt-rockers, the ludicrous…
Leaning Sideways
Our best movies of the year actually may have been anything but the best to a few of our critics — such is the dilemma of offering employment to writers of dissenting opinion. In other words, the No. 1 film of 2004 wasn’t universally heralded by our team of Bill Gallo, Melissa Levine, Jean Oppenheimer,…
Marrying the Mainstream
In 2004, the line between indie and mainstream rock disintegrated even faster than Britney Spears’s quickie Vegas marriage. Vinyl obsessives mingled with white-hat-wearing fratheads at Modest Mouse shows, Taking Back Sunday debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard charts, and Death Cab for Cutie earned O.C.-sanctioned buzz and a major-label record deal. Angular invaders from…
Splish Splash — Thud
The early reviews for Beyond the Sea, the Bobby Darin biopic on which Kevin Spacey did everything except feed the crew and sweep the set, have been so hateful that a latecomer to the bashing bash is tempted to head straight for the spiked egg nog and let the man pass without further abuse. (Which…
Dance, Dance Revolution
For hipsters, the coolest things are to be found twenty years ago, the most dreadful things ten years ago. So starting a few years back, we were deluged with ’80s electro and synth-pop, and we pretended to forget jungle ever existed. Electroclash, the first naive sortie by dance music into the cycle of retro-reinvention that…
Stage Frights & Delights
It’s time once again to lounge in front of a roaring fire, prop our SpongeBob slippers on a hassock, sip a fragrant hot toddy, and mull over the past 12 months of theater. Of course, even if you’re slipperless and haven’t the faintest idea what a toddy is, despair not — reasonably clean sweatsocks and…
On the Down-Low
Everyone knows all of Usher’s Confessions by now; everyone went to see Prince play “1999” for the very last time. Everyone knows all about Lil Jon and his penchant for hollering “Yayy-uuhhh!” With everyone paying attention to these superstars, a lot of other talented folks got drowned out, and not just Brandy. (She came out…
On Stage
Black Nativity — Langston Hughes’ Black Nativity, originally developed in 1961, is a refreshing change from the music-box regularity of other tuneful entertainments. By putting gospel songs and singers in the spotlight to show off the expressive improvisations and foot-stomping energy this idiom provides, Hughes created a rich theatrical platform that can be embellished by…
Up From the Underworld
The sight of six makeup-clad Norwegian satanists on the Ozzfest main stage this summer was a great sign for metal, if not the makers of Max Factor. During recent outings, metal’s biggest event of the year has been plagued by rote rap-rockers like Crazy Town, Papa Roach and Linkin Park, but in 2004, the underground…
Fahrenheit 2004
The Moore the Merrier One film looms over all others in 2004: Fahrenheit 9/11, released in the heat of summer and the heat of an election-year battle, cast all comers in its estimable shadow and renders them moot. Combined, the dozen or so political docs that received theatrical distribution this year didn’t make a fraction…
Americana Pie
Sales-wise, at least, 2004 was the year Nashville got its groove back. Heavy hitters such as Tim McGraw, George Strait, Kenny Chesney, Keith Urban and Shania Twain all dropped platinum records, but what has the city more excited than it’s been in years is the fact that it finally managed to anoint a couple of…
Arsenic & Old Lead
When the City of Akron donated land for the new Mason Elementary School, officials overlooked one small problem: Arsenic and lead are considered poor nutritional supplements for little kids. The land, known as Mason Park, used to go by the more fetching name of “Death Trap,” in honor of the many people who drowned in…
On View
Drawn to Nature — Christopher Pekoc is known for his photography, but his works incorporate a variety of media, here including shellac and gold leaf, giving them the appearance of richly hued patchwork quilts. Jagged sewing-machine stitches outline images of birds and flowers collaged over a glowing amber polyester film that’s lined with a grid…
A God and His Demons
A God and His Demons The twisted mind of a string-bender: Thomas Francis’s cover story [“Lord of the Strings,” December 8] is noteworthy for showing Scene’s readers the inner workings of a very sick mind. There might be madness in all genius, but it doesn’t mean that we should be applauding it when it breaks…
The Field Guide to Bad Service
The room can be handsome, the food divine. But muck up an otherwise pleasant dinner with crappy service, and the whole damn evening goes to hell. The quality of service is often the fulcrum on which our dining pleasure balances. In fact, a server’s power — for good or for evil — is so vast…
Starr Burst
Cocoa Renée Starr never grants interviews. Those dimwit reporters never get their “make-it-up-as-I-go-along” stories straight. She’s not as old as they say she is. Her glamour shots have never been airbrushed. And she certainly hasn’t had her face superimposed on somebody else’s body. “I’m keepin’ it real,” says Starr, breaking her silence after nearly 30…
Fed Up in 2004
This time last year, local restaurateurs were holding their collective breath, awaiting the blows from dozens of chain restaurants going into the East Side’s Legacy Village and Eton Chagrin, and the West Side’s Crocker Park. So how’s it actually shaken out? “It’s been much worse than we feared,” says Sergio Abramof, owner of Sergio’s in…
This Week’s Day-By-Day Picks
Thursday, December 30 All you really need to know about Columbus’s Ekoostik Hookah is right there in the title and on the cover of its latest album. A blurry TV test pattern emblazoned with pot-green letters spells it out: Ohio Grown. Yes, Ekoostik Hookah is best appreciated under the influence. A fondness for Grateful Dead-style…
