More Band for the Buck
Dan Bliss is talking on his cell phone, pacing in front of Heaven and Earth, the Flats nightclub that he owns with partner John Michalak. In the midst of organizing the Cleveland Music Festival, a local band extravaganza he hopes will turn into an annual event, Bliss is trying to schedule 150 bands that will…
Field of Creams
To the armchair quarterback, English rugby looks no more organized than a childhood game of Smear the Queer: One guy runs with the ball, everyone else tackles him. The Eastern Suburbs Rugby Football Club, which will host its 7’s in the Snow tournament on Saturday, may not entirely disagree, but the game does have rules…
Tired Tracks
Tim Kinsellas and his art-damage-pop-noise quintet Joan of Arc have just returned to Chicago from a brief tour of Japan, which he characterizes as “maybe the greatest 10 days of my entire life.” But the effects are showing. Kinsellas is still soporific from the whirlwind circuit and the return to his own time zone. He…
Loose Lips
If vaginas could talk, what would they say? “Slow down!” “More, please.” “Lick me.” “Stay home.” With the help of a vagina puppet, female genitalia are able to say this and a lot more in director Deb Lemire’s adaptation of The Vagina Monologues, an Obie Award-winning play making its Akron debut on Sunday at the…
Howie Smith
Although he hasn’t gotten much publicity, saxophonist Howie Smith, coordinator of Cleveland State’s jazz studies program, is among the finest and most versatile jazzmen to perform in this area. Many Cleveland jazz fans have heard him play brilliantly in relatively traditional post-bop settings, with people such as tenorman Ernie Krivda, trumpeter Kennie Davis, and pianist…
Playmate of the Month
Sara is quirky and free-spirited. That, at least, is the premise of the hilariously wretched new weepie Sweet November, of which Sara, embodied by the breathtaking Charlize Theron, is the heroine. But if you’re smart enough to run in terror at the threat of a movie character who’s quirky and free-spirited, have no fear: The…
Brad Mehldau
Pianist Brad Mehldau grew up on rock, studied classical music, and obviously loves them both. But more important, he finds ways to fold this music gracefully into his own, and it’s all the better for it. Whether playing solo or in the company of bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Jorge Rossy, Mehldau generates ecstatic, passionate…
The Kindness of Strangers
Fascinating and engrossing on every conceivable level, the beautifully constructed feature-length documentary Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport opens with the mournful sound of a train and images of toys and books sitting untouched in what was once a child’s bedroom. As the credit sequence ends, an elderly woman addresses an unseen…
David Allan Coe
The wild rumor circulating about this David Allan Coe show is that Johnny Cash will be making a cameo. The venue wouldn’t confirm or deny it, but Cash and Coe would make a terrific double bill. After all, they’re both old-school country icons who have surrounded themselves with outlaw mythologies. Coe even released an album…
Bored Again
Lance Barton, thin as paper and frail as fine china, is such a horrific stand-up that, during an amateur-night performance at the Apollo Theater, he is booed with so much force — the audience whips up its own whirlwind — he’s literally knocked off the stage. Lance’s manager insists he’s a failure because he’s afraid…
United Future Organization
Three globetrotting DJs known as United Future Organization (UFO) have been experimenting with various world beats and sounds since their debut single “I Love My Baby (My Baby Loves Jazz)” became a cult dance groove in 1992. Bon Voyage, the trio’s latest album, follows UFO into its latest global obsession — progressive South American rhythms.…
All His Children
In his bright, spacious corner office, on the third floor of a building no parent ever wants to visit, the man with the toughest job in Ohio looks up from paperwork spread before him and pauses before assessing his worst day of the last two years. “I was pissed,” he says. William M. Denihan figured…
Tortoise
The first cut on Tortoise’s new disc is a keeper. Or is it the second? Or maybe just part of the second — the rocking part, before the twittering takes over. Same thing happens way into the disc, too. You have to wade through lots of pretension for the good parts. Tortoise’s nervy, ambient musical…
Furball, the Sequel
Gizmo was a dream on four legs, with strawberry-colored fur and a bark that sounded like the far-off tinkling of golden handbells. But Kipper, Dorothy Hall’s new mutt, is 10 panting pounds of terror, howling at the wrong time and mauling innocent shoes. What Kipper would like to get his fangs on most, though, is…
Charivari
A Cajun band from Louisiana, Charivari might be the best dance outfit in a notoriously danceable genre. The name comes from a word meaning “all-night party” — specifically ones held outside the bedroom of a couple on their wedding night. Its appropriateness has been lost on few who have heard them get it on. Formerly…
The Cop vs. the Pot Smoker
James Martin walked into Dina’s Pizza in Old Brooklyn just before closing time, wearing a tie-dyed sweatshirt and jeans, his hair in a ponytail. To one of the off-duty cops sitting at a table, he looked like a throwback to the ’70s. He wasn’t a regular, so he didn’t know the bar was a hangout…
John Schott
One of the major figures in the San Francisco avant-jazz scene, guitarist/composer/arranger John Schott has a working knowledge of several musical genres, old and new. On this unusual album, he mixes excerpts from recordings made from 1888-1915 (except for a ’40s forgery of someone claiming to be Walt Whitman reading “America”) into his pieces. Performers…
Agent Provocateur
Her voice is soft, tending toward the meek. It’s not what one expects from an agent provocateur. Yet Marilyn Kopp has fashioned a role as a one-woman truth squad for media coverage of the abortion debate. And her beef is this: Cleveland newspapers continue to report that late-term abortions are illegal in Ohio, when it…
The Schwartz Bros.
Something about playing on his home turf brings out the best in guitarist Glenn Schwartz, and this bootleg tape has it all — screaming solos, religious raving, and guitar trips to the outer edge of the cosmos. Schwartz’s cover of the bluegrass standard “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” as well as other blues standards showcases…
Cough It Up
Sometimes, usually out on the golf course near his home in upstate New York, Dan DeCarlo feels terrific, far younger than his 81 years. He’ll thwack the ball, reflect upon his 55 years of marriage to the same beautiful woman and occasionally contemplate a life spent drawing and creating some of comicdom’s most enduring and…
Keeping Kids Safe From Art
Picasso went to public school: In response to Frank Dzik’s letter [“Kids in the Clink,” January 25] about his charter school, I quote . . . “They conduct parent satisfaction surveys, because, after all, aren’t the parents the customers?” I thought the students were the customers. He further says, “The curriculum is excellent and features…
Recycled Blues
Pearl Cleague’s Blues for an Alabama Sky defines the term “potboiler.” The play takes its five characters through so many trials and tribulations that, to paraphrase a Thelma Ritter quip from All About Eve, “there’s everything but the bloodhounds yapping at their behinds.” Cleague attempts to capture a desperate Harlem as it evolves from jazz…
Dining on the Rocks
You can’t argue with success. But that doesn’t mean some people won’t try. Take the owners at Sushi Rock, the clubby bilevel sushi bar and “meet” market in the lively Warehouse District. From the front of the house, at least, the place gives every indication of being a hit among its mostly twentysomething clientele. A…
First Taste
This may be the first year that J. Pistone Market and Gathering Place (3245 Warrensville Center Road, Shaker Heights; 216-283-3663) will be joining such venerable venues as the Inn at Turner’s Mill and the Baricelli Inn in hosting Taste of the Nation events to raise money for local hunger-relief agencies. But owner Joan Pistone and…
Border Jumping
Not even a year ago, singer-guitarist Neko Case was just another ex-punk living in the Pacific Northwest. She occasionally played at local bars, but worked in relative anonymity. But since Furnace Room Lullaby, an album of beautiful old-style country music that finds the Virginia-born singer accompanied by baritone guitar, fiddle, and mandolin, came out and…
