On Stage
Midnight Martini Show — There is a strange attraction toward Frank Sinatra’s loosely organized Rat Pack and their infamous, loopily disorganized Las Vegas shows that ran for a few golden years back in the 1960s. Frank, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr. mixed pop songs, corny jokes, and Johnnie Walker into an irreverent, hip evening…
Black 47
Is it possible that no one remembers B.S. Pully? “You’re the first person who has asked,” says Black 47 head honcho Larry Kirwan when questioned as to why his band’s last disc, New York Town, was dedicated to the gravel-voiced actor. Kirwan says Pully was the uncle of Stewart Lerman, the album’s co-producer. Family tree…
Where the Wild Girls Are
She could choose any of the girls, but Ashlea Goins, with her made-for-MTV body, picks the first pair she sees. “Will you guys flash for the camera?” she asks, smiling like a traveling salesman. “You’ll get a T-shirt.” One has a California tan and shiny brown hair. The other looks barely 21, her sandy blond…
On View
NEW Masterworks From the Phillips Collection — Touring this group of highlights from the renowned Phillips Collection is like taking an art-history survey course on Impressionism and Abstraction, and the list of artists reads like the textbook’s index: Monet, Manet, Courbet, Morisot, Cézanne, Delacroix, Corot, Ingres, Van Gogh, Goya, Bonnard, Braque, Matisse, Renoir, Degas, Picasso,…
Stereotoxic
You probably missed Stereotoxic’s last major gig: an appearance at a Peabody’s battle of the bands that ended quickly, in a rain of (unintentionally) broken equipment. Their full-length debut, The Virgin Behind Logic, has been completed but not yet released. Some of its songs have an epic feel, like Slayer covering cuts from Master of…
Tour of Duty
300 bodies sweated liquor into a thick canopy of mist at the Night and Day, a claustrophobic club in Manchester, England. Its Old World charm had been updated with screen-print portraits of Courtney Love and Johnny Rotten. It smelled of a beer-drenched sauna. The Black Keys owned the stage. Dan Auerbach, a stout, red-bearded 24-year-old,…
In the Night Market
After dark, and minus the fruit vendors, flower peddlers, and stocky, sensibly shod babushkas and their two-wheeled shopping carts, the monolithic West Side Market is a somber place. At the age of 93, it seems to slumber fitfully, its rest interrupted by dreams of pierogies and prime beef, kiwis and kidneys; an after-hours foray into…
Team Fright Birthday Party
Last we heard from Team Fright, the lads’ indie rock sounded pretty promising. But their latest EP, Basement Birthday Party, edges away from the garage and into thick discordant punk that evokes mid-career Ramones. The sudden addition of so much heft led us to ask team leader Wred Fright some hard questions. For the record,…
FirstEnergy Profits Up
Things are coming up roses for The Tool of Satan. Last week, FirstEnergy announced 2004 profits of $878 million, more than double its 2003 figure, when the company plunged the entire East Coast into darkness as a cost-saving measure. CEO Anthony Alexander said his latest success was due largely to increased electricity demand. Investors also…
The Simple Life
Color chef Michelle Gaw happy. Energized by her new business venture, Simply Done Dinners, the 18-year vet of the former Watermark was bubbling over with good cheer when we caught up with her recently in her spiffy new digs, in Parma’s Tri-City Shopping Center (7866 Broadview Rd., at the northwest corner of Broadview and Sprague).…
Doves
In 2002, New York’s Interpol and England’s Doves each made a valiant effort at releasing the year’s best homage to Joy Division: Both Turn on the Bright Lights and The Last Broadcast took gloomy doom-rock atmospherics, gray-sky guitars, and deep-baritone emoting as far as possible without actually covering “Love Will Tear Us Apart.” So last…
Hell to Pay
More tales of fun with King Nothing: I just read the great story on receiver Mark Dottore [“King Nothing,” February 9]. Having been an employee of Fortran Printing, I witnessed almost everything the other companies in the article went through. Judge Russo said she did not know of the problems with Dottore, but when we…
You Go Grrrl
olk-punk firecracker Ani DiFranco is unquestionably the female equivalent to Guided by Voices’ über-prolific Bob Pollard. Since forming her own label, Righteous Babe, in the early ’90s, the Buffalo native has dropped no fewer than 14 studio albums and two live discs. Separating the essentials from the throwaways is a daunting task, so here’s a…
The Residents
For avant-gardists, the Residents sure are stuck in a pretty deep artistic rut. The only thing differentiating the Eyeball Kids’ latest release from what’s come before it is technology. Elsewhere, the singsong melodies and nursery-rhyme-style lyrics remain unchanged. Of course, the band’s obsessions do shift from album to album. This time, they’re thinking about the…
Enter, Stooge Right
Michael Schlesinger acknowledges the stereotype, even as he tries to dispel it. “There are a lot of women who don’t like the Stooges,” says the man who put together the Three Stooges 70th Annivoisary Blowout. “Men tend to be surface creatures. The Stooges didn’t have any pretensions. It was just ‘Let’s go out and be…
Get Out of My Head!
Her name is Annie. She’s Norwegian and beautiful, not an unusual combination. She’s big in Europe right now. And if you’ve heard “Chewing Gum,” the lead single from her debut, Anniemal, you hate her. But you can’t get her out of your head. “Oh no/Oh no/You’re not the one/ You think you’re chocolate/But you’re chewing…
Judas Priest
Judas Priest’s 15th studio album begins on a high note: Returning frontman Rob Halford lets loose with a pained shriek that sounds like the Queen of the Damned getting a titty twister. Dogs will howl, women and children will cry, and metalheads will rejoice, for Priest is back. The band’s first album with its original…
This Week’s Day-By-Day Picks
Thursday, February 24 Even magician-cum-comedian Eric Brouman isn’t sure where he fits in these days. “There’s the stereotypical magician with the top hat, tuxedo, and fat wife,” laughs the twentysomething Cleveland Heights resident, who performs more than 350 shows a year. “Then there are the young guys with spiked hair, crazy outfits, and techno music.…
Bye, Bye, My Darling
“GO FUCK YOURSELF YOU EXPLOITATIVE SCUMBAG FUCKHEAD,” Glenn Danzig wrote to us in menacing capital letters. Asking him about the Misfits seemed like a good idea a few years back, when a version of the band returned to the club circuit. Seeing as how Danzig made his bones as the mastermind behind the seminal melodic…
Sean Costello
It didn’t take long to spawn a prime candidate for best roots music release of 2005. Sean Costello’s fourth disc is a formidable mix of youthful drive and savvy-beyond-his-years authority. The 25-year-old Atlanta-bred guitar stud infuses this soulful set with plenty of energy, balancing attitude with a glaring respect for the classic genres he takes…
Dino-Mite!
On an archaeological dig in Tunisia three years ago, Michael Ryan stared in shock at the skeleton in the sand. The veteran paleontologist had unearthed dinosaur remains before in the rugged terrain of Montana; he was even part of a team that dug up the corpse of a new species of horned dinosaur in Alberta.…
Battle of the Beats
Rob Black stretched the beat like it was made of spandex. Standing behind the five-and-a-half-foot-tall DJ booth at the B-Side Liquor Lounge, the bespectacled, ballcap-wearing DJ bounced up and down while he juggled rhythms. It was as if his legs were corked with bedsprings. Black’s excitement was justifiable. The veteran Cleveland DJ was vying for…
Neva Dinova
The influence of Conor Oberst extends far beyond weeping teenage girls and glossy spreads in hipster magazines. Artists with whom he’s collaborated — Cursive, Now It’s Overhead, and Neva Dinova, with whom he released the split EP One Jug of Wine, Two Vessels last year — are perfecting the deliberate storytelling and collision of minimalism…
Dysfunctional Family Values
2/26-3/13 Ensemble Theatre’s celebrating its 25th anniversary by returning to its roots. The collective was founded to stage the works of Eugene O’Neill, and this week it presents the playwright’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night, one of American theater’s most acclaimed works. “It’s the cornerstone of American drama,” says director Licia Colombi. “It’s the great…
C’mon Get Happy Again
After closing for nearly three years, the Happy Dog (5801 Detroit Ave.) on Cleveland’s near West Side is ready to resume hosting one of the area’s more eclectic music scenes. Co-owner Billy Scanlon bought the building in 1997 and opened its floor to jam bands, bluegrass combos, and avant-garde jazz groups, regularly hosting acts like…
Jackie
When it comes to female-fronted midriff rock, first impressions are usually enough to get you in the game. Former Mojo vocalist/tambourine-shaker Jackie LaPonza not only has the looks; she can hold a note and make it swell until you’re both about to pop. One record into her career, comparisons to a young Gwen Stefani are…
Bring the Pain
2/24-3/2 Think riding a bike across a log that’s five feet off the ground is difficult? It is. Think falling off that log onto a concrete floor is painful? Right again. That’s one reason you don’t see many people attempting that stunt at Ray’s Indoor Mountain Bike Park. The super-skinny bridges and towering teeter-totters in…
Morbid Angel
A Morbid Angel reunion is kind of like the return of firing squads or hangings: Somehow, death becomes even more grisly. For longhairs, this is the best news since the advent of the water pipe. Death metal’s signature act, Morbid Angel will be hitting the road with its classic lineup for the first time since…
Bassholes
By now, all the griping about the Bassholes being the true originators of blues punk has been rendered moot. Mastermind Don Howland has always championed arcane bluesmen, so it’s no surprise he’s become one himself. Despite a recent solo disc and rumors that he’s dead, Howland’s come up with a kind of definitive Bassholes record…
Here Comes the Sun
SAT 2/26 Batteries aren’t included when Erika Weliczko is Making a Solar-Powered Toy Car. A renewable-energy expert, she says they’re not needed. “It’s a simple little kit of pieces and parts, and there’s no drilling of holes or gluing and waiting an hour,” she explains. “Enough with that baloney.” Once the wooden auto is assembled,…
Kaki King
Most young’uns are content to bang on pots and pans in the kitchen in between Sesame Street episodes as a musical pastime. Not so for acoustic instrumentalist Kaki King, who took up guitar at age 5 and picked up drumming for good measure at around 10. The precocious Atlanta native honed her skills on both…
Teutonic Techno
MON 2/28 Michael Mayer shudders when he’s called the godfather of German techno. “Godfathers usually get killed and replaced by younger ones,” jokes Mayer. At 33, Mayer has no plans to disappear. When he’s not running Kompakt Records, he’s turntabling at his own dance club in Cologne. Plus, he finds time to dis American DJs.…
Snowglobe
Memphis’s Snowglobe plays an entrancing blend of cosmic American music that owes as much to pioneering psychedelic country/pop legends like the Byrds and Gram Parsons as it does to modern-day fellow travelers like the Flaming Lips. Formed by guitarist-vocalists Tim Regan and Brad Postlethwaite, who have been pals since high school, the duo briefly relocated…
Bad Black Movie
First, the good news. Uncharacteristically for a February release targeting African American viewers, Diary of a Mad Black Woman is not a yuppie romantic comedy featuring Gabrielle Union and Morris Chestnut. Anthony Anderson and Eddie Griffin are nowhere to be seen, and despite the fact that the most memorable character is a broadly played, overweight…
Jimmy Thackery & the Drivers
While power blues-rock is the main business at hand when Jimmy Thackery takes the stage, the guitarist’s bag o’ tricks is jammed full. The man hasn’t met a style of American roots music that he doesn’t like or can’t play the shit out of. Besides the blistering blues and roots-rock he’s garnered his well-deserved rep…
In the Cut
It’s not easy to pull off a good morality tale. Too often, movies with a message, or about a movement, reduce characters and events to types. They pit unqualified good against unqualified evil and, like so much of what issues from Hollywood, do so to ill effect. That’s why Moolaadé, the new film from 81-year-old…
Electric Eel Shock
The Gearhead Records brass must’ve racked up some serious frequent-flyer miles while wintering in Japan, as Electric Eel Shock is one of two (and maybe more) rising sons signed by the label recently. It hardly matters that thousands of miles separate Electric Eel Shock from Gearhead’s West Coast hooch haunts; the label’s sonic earmarks abound:…
Gracias a la Muerte
The Sea Inside, the new right-to-die drama from Spanish director Alejandro Amenábar (The Others), is a flawed film worth seeing. Based on Letters From Hell, a book by quadriplegic Ramón Sampedro about his 30-year quest to kill himself, the movie favors the emotional over the legal, foregrounding Sampedro’s relationships with his family and with the…
Radio 4
Radio 4’s Stealing of a Nation has not aged well since its release last September. For starters, “Cut your losses and get the votes/Come fall they change every single quote,” a hopeful lyric from “Nation,” just sounds kind of depressing since November. And that’s not all. Though much of the album revives early-’80s punk-funk with…
Love Thang
Writers have tried from time immemorial to capture the essence of young, innocent love. And why not? There’s something fresh and ineffable about people harpooned by Cupid’s darts, and legions of audiences who want to re-create that gloriously sappy feeling they once had. For even when two people stay in love over decades, nothing can…
Recover
Signed to Universal, Recover will likely be a major gauge of how big an emo-related band can get. Unlike the legion of schmucks aimlessly aping At the Drive In, the Texas quartet is one of the few bands of its ilk that conveys emotion without simultaneously creating the impression it’s painfully constipated. No calculated angular…
