Southern Grrrls
For a band that calls itself the Gossip, there isn’t a whole lot of extraneous chatter when you’re talking to its members. Maybe that’s the irony of the name. Maybe it’s simply the band’s first exposure to the rigors of wide-scale publicity. Whatever it is, the members of the Gossip mow through an interview in…
Pigeon English
Like park ranger Anna Pigeon, the heroine she created for her mysteries, author Nevada Barr has a hard time staying in one place. “I have changed careers about every seven years,” she says. Before a career as a park ranger with the national parks, Barr was an actress. Now she is a bestselling author, with…
A Walk on the Weird Side
It was a Saturday night at Borders in Westlake, and the place was so packed, there wasn’t even an open seat in the café/reading area. Standing in the corner, with only a guitar and amp, a quirky songwriter calling himself Hungry Bill was playing his “psychoustic” songs about partying with Charles Manson and being transformed…
Arthur’s Blues
Even though the Beatles, Stones, and Dylan covered his songs, Arthur Alexander’s country-soul cachet and flings with stardom never made him a solid living. The tall, quietly charismatic Alexander was a man whose inner demons, aggravated by brushes with the law and some questionable psychiatric “treatment,” kept him from the acclaim — and profits –…
(Sub)merge
A unique multimedia performance created by local sax star Josh Smith, New York saxophonist Chris Jonas, and New York artists Colleen Sanders and Molly Sturges, “(Sub)merge” is an art installation as much as a musical performance. The exhibit/ show will allow the audience to manipulate the music by giving patrons private tasks that will determine…
The Weakness of the Flesh
Have you heard? Beauty’s only skin deep. Pay attention now: When it comes to love, experience is the best teacher. And just in case you didn’t know: Youth is wasted on the young. Such are the banalities director Tonie Marshall dispenses, more or less, in Venus Beauty Institute, a French romantic comedy that might cause…
Deborah Coleman
Deborah Coleman’s detractors — mainly blues purists — say she’s too eclectic and trying too hard for mass appeal. But Coleman doesn’t hide the fact that she’s influenced as much by Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, and the Isley Brothers as she is by blues greats such as Albert Collins and Freddie King. It’s all part…
Ape Escape
It’s almost impossible to know what to make of Monkeybone after one viewing; there’s so much going on in this dreamland of stop-motion, computer-generated animation, and celebrity cameos that you have trouble keeping up with it. Indeed, like a half-remembered dream, the movie’s often so overwhelming that even its dull, dead moments (of which there…
Death Cab for Cutie
No one can romanticize the past quite like an indie rocker: Ask Benjamin Gibbard, lead moper for the coyly named Northwestern mellow-pop quartet Death Cab for Cutie. The five tracks on “Forbidden Love,” its Versus-esque new EP, take a long, mournful look back at those schooltime salad days full of letter jackets and morose sexual…
Good Idea, Bad Blood
On a Tuesday afternoon in Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court, Judge John W. Gallagher sits at the front of his small, ’70s-era courtroom, scanning over the room’s dearth of right angles and abundance of burnt-orange furniture. Searching, it turns out, for Minnie. “There you are,” he says with glee. “How you doing today, Minnie?” Minnie and…
Morbid Angel
When he formed Morbid Angel in Florida over 10 years ago, guitarist Trey Azagthoth had some lofty goals. He sought both to better the standards for death metal and to capitalize on a burgeoning genre. The group did something like that, releasing Altars of Madness (1989), an album generally considered to be one of the…
Fade Away
The cheap seats fill the fastest. The Los Angeles Lakers are in town, and scores of families have cashed in their package plans for a glimpse of the champs. Cops and concession workers seem to stand a little straighter, move a little faster. Young singles, dressed and pressed for a night on the town, roam…
Shirley Bassey
Beat diggers and sample addicts have been grafting Miss Shirley Bassey’s sly grooves and blustery orchestrations to their electronic productions for several years now. The Tigress from Tiger Bay nurtured beats and harmonies that fueled jazz pop into a new transcendence of panache in the ’60s and ’70s, redefining glamour pop with massive arrangements, crafty…
Salvation Island
God has always been a multimedia experience. Crashing thunder, parting clouds, tearing the temple in two — He knows the value of sound and visuals. When He sent Moses up on Mt. Sinai, He wasn’t bouncing ideas off the nearest boulder. He projected in divine stereo to the sandaled minions below. Now, being a thoroughly…
Half Japanese
It’s impossible to be objective about Half Japanese releases, because of the lack of a proper yardstick by which to measure Jad Fair’s wobbly but winning pop constructions. Perhaps more to the point, the artists that Fair and Half Japanese often invoke are visionaries who inspire passionate adoration, and Fair’s approximations of their work are…
Sticky Fingers 101
When it comes to politics, wisdom says the system corrupts. Then again, those entering politics might be just a bit more susceptible. Take the case of eight Ohio State student-government leaders who were recently removed from office after they lavished on themselves a $2,250 night on the town — and then went to curious lengths…
Dave Matthews Band
It was only a matter of time before the Dave Matthews Band made its Big Rock Album. For the past seven years, the jam band has been steadily working its way toward rock radio. Not that Matthews and his quartet of university-schooled multi-instrumentalists haven’t penetrated mainstream radio before, but previously they did so without catering…
Harden’s Crossing
It was to have been a routine stop on a routine press tour, yet another town in which the actress was to show up, chit and chat with the local media about her movie, then move on–the traveling salesman getting the word out, moving The Product. Denver, Dallas, San Francisco, Your Town Here–all stops along…
Charlie Weiner
It was some 15 years ago that Charlie Weiner was releasing comedy albums with hokey titles such as 12 Inches of Weiner and Dancing at the Weinerland Ball. Weiner, who lives in Brunswick, decided to focus on doing stand-up comedy. Until now. Encouraged by local singer-songwriter Alex Bevan Weiner has returned to songwriting with Ghosts…
Welcome to Lucifer’s Lair
Home of a minor-league antichrist: In response to your review of Left Behind [February 1]: As a Christian, I know for a fact there will be no rapture. No one gets a free ride to the first resurrection, but you started making fun of the fact that they mentioned the “New World Order.” Well, George…
Sentimental Journey
Sculptor Frederick Hart is probably best known for the “Three Soldiers” bronze statue at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. Hart’s preparatory sculpture for the monument is now on view at the Contessa Gallery downtown as part of Frederick Hart: Transcendence and Renewal, an exhibit of about 40 works by the artist, who died…
Mamet’s Monsters
Every summer, busloads of theater aficionados head up to Canada’s Shaw and Stratford festivals. These are the tea-drinkers of theaterdom, those who regard the stage as an elegant getaway, where maids with counterfeit accents arrange flowers and flirtations. Those who make these pilgrimages are the same rarefied souls who look upon David Mamet and his…
Stuck on Stix
The familiar ritual of gathering around the dining-room table may have faded, replaced by fast-food pit stops and frozen dinners eaten in solitude over the kitchen sink. But even in households where the dining room has been converted into a home office and Pizza Hut’s number is at the top of the speed dial, folks…
On the Right Track
There are new hands on the throttle at Steamers Café (8074 Columbia Road, Olmsted Falls; 440-235-6030), the cozy little eatery in picturesque Grand Pacific Junction. Hospitality industry veterans Jim and Rita Nicklas took over the restaurant in November and have been hard at work since then, cleaning and remodeling the 10-year-old dining room’s interior. Now,…
Yer Reunion
After playing at a Michael Stanley tribute concert held at the Rock Hall late last year, guitarist Joe Walsh, bassist Dale Peters, and drummer Jim Fox had dinner at Century, the snazzy Ritz-Carlton restaurant in downtown Cleveland. The three core members of the James Gang, they played together from 1968-71 and had talked about old…
