Don’t Kid Yourself
When Robert Rodriguez busted out Spy Kids, many viewers were surprised, but they shouldn’t have been. Though considered a quintessential “indie” auteur, having made El Mariachi for around $7,000, he was always a lighthearted action director, as anyone who actually saw Mariachi could tell you. When MGM tried to create their own version of Spy…
Mindy Smith
Few debut albums have been so eagerly anticipated as One Moment Please, the first CD from Nashville singer-songwriter Mindy Smith, released last week. The buzz on Smith turned into white noise after she stole the show on last fall’s Dolly Parton tribute CD, Just Because I’m a Woman. On a record with such veteran heavyweights…
Game On
Sources in the gambling community say the operator who has flourished most recently is Jimmy Ferris, a Lebanese immigrant known for his Cadillac and flashy jewelry. His games were popular, but he faded away after operators from the Akron-Canton area flooded the market. Ferris has since surfaced on Cleveland’s West Side, where Moneypenny had been…
Elephant‘s Graveyard
The spooky beauty of Elephant, Gus Van Sant’s strange take on the Columbine massacre, arises not from the shock of sudden violence, but from the filmmaker’s steady gaze at the numbing routines of life inside a suburban high school. With what first looks like cool detachment, Van Sant (My Own Private Idaho, Good Will Hunting)…
Finger Eleven
For six long years, the Canadian quintet Finger Eleven must have regarded America as a stubborn virgin on prom night: No matter how hard the band worked it, the group just couldn’t get lucky. Despite some well-crafted hard-rock albums, a whole lotta U.S. touring, even a hearty push from labelmates Creed (when that actually carried…
Revenge of the Jocks
Vin Lananna, the new director of athletics at Oberlin College, has never seen a Star Wars movie. He was coaching cross-country at C.W. Post, his alma mater, when the original was released in 1977. By the time of Attack of the Clones, Lananna had won five national championships as the director of track and field…
Mattie’s Choice
If you ever find yourself short of goosebumps, track down a Billie Holiday recording of “Strange Fruit,” the 1938 tune that has been dubbed one of the 10 songs that changed the world. In it, composer Abel Meeropol sketches with a few incisive lines the horror of racist lynchings and torchings in the South, while…
Kylie Minogue
The overarching appeal of a Kylie Minogue album lies in its promise of eternal youth. Her slinky tales of seduction and chunky beats illuminate a fantasy land where glossy, pretty things party all night to the exclusion of responsibility, accountability, or thoughts of living past age 30. Body Language forgoes the gigantic gay discotheque anthems…
The House Folds
From the road, there are no lights, no sounds, no signs of life. But on this Friday night in October, between the opaque, faceless buildings of the North Hawkins Armory in Akron, there are rows and rows of cars. One light bulb shines above a door to a building toward the back of the lot.…
Russian Roulette
One doesn’t often see Jerry Seinfeld and Anton Chekhov mentioned in the same sentence, but as it turns out, they have quite a bit in common. Seinfeld broke new ground in television with a show “about nothing,” featuring four inveterate whiners with relationship and commitment issues. Chekhov got there about a century earlier in his…
Damageplan
For a decade and a half, Phil Anselmo was the leering little devil perched upon the shoulders of Pantera’s Vinnie Paul and Dimebag Darrell, goading them on to much nastier, ever more carcinogenic metal than one got the feeling these two Van Halen-lovin’ Texans were ever really into. But with Anselmo ditching the Cowboys from…
Bosley’s Booboo
Bosley’s Booboo Newsfolk should keep abreast of the facts: Hey, I just saw that website about the newswoman, Catherine Bosley [First Punch, January 21]. Her boobs are phony as hell! Mark Kmetzko did a story last week about how terrible local news shows are, and this just underscores his point. I see a lot of…
All Fired Up
If the old saw linking consistency to small minds is indeed true, then Phil “The Fire” Davis’s eponymous downtown dining room must have a “mind” as vast as the U.S. budget deficit. No, that’s not a good thing in a business, but at least it helps explain how a midday-Thursday visit could leave members of…
Various Artists
Barbershop 2 isn’t likely to offer as direct a challenge to black orthodoxy as Cedric the Entertainer’s priceless three-word dismissal of Jesse Jackson in the first film. And that goes double for the accompanying music, a sleek, businesslike collection of potential urban singles out to follow trends, not set them. With its creeping West Coast…
$10 Bil Ain’t Enough?
Professional bank robbers have one unbreakable rule: Never return to the scene of the crime. Apparently, that truism has been lost on FirstEnergy. The first robbery occurred in 2000, when FirstEnergy wanted to charge consumers for investments made prior to deregulation. The state’s consultant said the company was due $2.6 billion. But through a sweetheart…
Roots Radical
It takes but a tip of the hat for B.E. Mann to begin irritating reggae purists. As he lifts his black derby on a recent Monday afternoon, no dreads spill out; a patchwork of thinning black hair is all that’s uncovered. “They call ’em baldies,” Mann chuckles, speaking of follicle-deficient reggae obsessives like himself. Rasta…
DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid vs. Twilight Circus Dub Sound System
Dub soundclashes are a classic technique (traditionally, a meeting of Jamaican sound systems in a sparring match), honored here by two prolific musicians who live miles away from dub’s geographic origin — DJ Spooky in New York (when he isn’t traveling around the world) and Twilight Circus’s Canadian-born Ryan Moore in the Netherlands. Both are…
This Week’s Day-By-Day Picks
Thursday, February 5 The Barons are the only team in town that can claim more wins than losses this season. Yes, it’s hockey. But they’re a joy to watch: They’ve got decent defense, good scoring punch, and enough muscle to keep things lively. Tonight they’re up against the unfortunately named Manitoba Moose — opponents in…
Family Tradition
Hank Williams III’s birthright guarantees him a spot on the Grand Ole Opry — if he cares to follow certain stipulations. And he’s been there. But recently, Hank’s clocked more time on MTV’s Headbangers’ Ball, as bassist for the metal-hardcore crossover all-stars of Superjoint Ritual, backing former Pantera frontman Philip Anselmo. “He’s a fresh face…
Probot
Rock-and-roll fantasy camp isn’t just for baby boomers who were never in bands in the first place. It can also be for ex-punks with closets full of metal albums, whose current mainstream-alternative bands aren’t providing the pure chewing satisfaction they’re after. Thus, Dave Grohl, weary of platinum sales and critical lube jobs, has begun taking…
Desert Storm
A gut feeling told Sarah Brightman to recall every book about exotic places she had ever opened. Those pages, she sensed, would take her back to distant regions that fascinated her as a child, such as magical Marrakesh, a bustling casbah, and the alluring oases of North Africa. “I have always loved that whole Arabian…
Wild Mood Swings
As is the case with many British bands that eventually find mainstream success Stateside, the American conception of the Cure is skewed away from their darkest facets. The band’s first British top-40 entrant, the claustrophobic 1980 single “A Forest,” typified the shrouds of grinding gloom and skeletal danse macabre cloaking the early ’80s albums Seventeen…
Goodmorning Valentine
Goodmorning Valentine’s Joey Beltram sings a little like Chris Isaak and writes a lot like Jackson Browne. And if he can continue to do it with some regularity, Northeast Ohio can boast a major new talent. He has plenty of help from the rest of the band — six other Akron-Kent players contribute trumpets, violins,…
Starry, Starry Night
2/10-3/7 Before Nicholas Wright wrote Vincent in Brixton a couple years ago, nobody knew how Vincent van Gogh lost his virginity. The historical play is based on letters written by the Dutch painter when he was 20 years old and boinking a widowed landlady twice his age. “When you have your first sexual experience, you…
We’ll Drink to That
Add Richard Giamora’s name to the growing list of entrepreneurs helping Clevelanders drink more martinis. The Florida native joined the fray in late December, launching downtown’s newest martini bar, Hamilton’s, in a narrow space between Otto Moser’s and the Allen Theater, in the heart of Playhouse Square. Intimate, dimly lit, and all done up in…
The Skipped
The Skipped is not a band to pass by. Coming with garrulous old-school punk, the Cleveland trio is equal parts hooks and High Life. As with getting drunk or laying rubber, it doesn’t take much thought to get a kick out of the band’s latest — just a healthy sense of abandon and a bottle…
Ice, Ice, Babies
FRI 2/6 At 33, Jenni Meno hears her biological clock ticking. After 13 years of skating together, she and 40-year-old hubby Todd Sand — three-time national pairs champions — are performing their swan song at Smucker’s Stars on Ice, which comes to town Friday. “We really want to try and start a family,” says the…
Bomb Squad
Christmastime is boom or bust for record companies. Labels push to get their biggest albums out on store shelves, often rushing records to release before they’re the best they can be. On the flip side, many quality lower-profile albums get overlooked. With this in mind, we thought we’d evaluate half a dozen of the biggest…
Strike a Pose
SAT 2/7 Why didn’t someone think of this sooner? At Borders’ YogAdventure Kids Storytime, Sheila Buchanan reads a book about people twisting and turning their limbs into all sorts of funky positions. Then she shows little ones how to bend their own arms and legs into similar arrangements. “Yoga gets kids off the couch,” Buchanan…
Internet-based
Producer Joe Minadeo has his fingers in a lot of pies, the latest of which is an online music label for some of his numerous projects. Patternbased launched at www.Patternbased.com January 31, offering EPs from Akron-based groups Simple Machine, Tokyo Shapiro, and Low in the Sky. “There will be less of a musical or genre…
Instant Karma
TUE 2/10 Maggie Fishell wasn’t expecting to hit it off with a complete stranger in less time than it takes to heat a can of soup. To her surprise, she got a date out of it. Such is the beauty of 8minuteDating’s Cupid Party. Here’s how it works: You’re matched with eight potential dates for…
The Berlin Project
Like many adolescents growing up in the mid-to-late 1990s, John Garrighan became enthralled with the skanking sounds of the short-lived ska-core resurgence and formed the Berlin Project. The Pittsburgh-area band hung onto their horns for dear life through the turn of the century and two albums — Running for the Border and Culture Clash –…
Discounted Chuckles
FRI 2/6 Even misers need to laugh. That’s how Cleveland comedian Mike Baker sums up Cheap Yucks, a sporadically scheduled series of showcases for the region’s rising comedians. “This series is a place for them to spread their wings a bit and push up to the next level,” Baker says. That next level is apparently…
Michael Burks
If you can imagine Albert King reborn during the age of rock and funk, you can begin to draw a bead on guitarist/vocalist Michael Burks. The deep, smoky vocals of King at his strongest are conjured when Burks lays into one of his typical numbers: a mix of blues and R&B that evokes King’s mid-’70s…
Score!
When the 1980 U.S. Olympic Hockey Team, consisting of 20 raw college boys, beat the seemingly invincible, state-hardened Soviets and went on to win the gold medal at Lake Placid, the event was regarded, even in palm-lined Miami and iceless Honolulu, as the most amazing feat in U.S. Olympic history. This was not David knocking…
Denali
While the self-titled 2002 debut from Richmond, Virginia quartet Denali received its share of Björk comparisons, the group’s sophomore offering is likely to stand on its own merits, rather than its trip-hop stylings and Maura Davis’ voice, which can be as earsplitting as that of Iceland’s pint-size princess. The Instinct, unlike its eerily melancholic predecessor,…
Gettin’ Windy in the City
Whoops, franchise! Way back in 2002, who would have believed that a comedy starring rapper Ice Cube (né O’Shea Jackson) would be a hit, let alone spawn a sequel? Just having a giggle, obviously, but so are the producers of Barbershop 2: Back in Business, which handily snaps up its predecessor’s charming characters and homey…
Wolfpac
If “skin to win” dictated record sales, Wolfpac would be multiplatinum. Before Wolfpac shows, the evening’s featured dancer — aw, hell, let’s be frank: She’s a stripper — usually checks with the club’s management to get the OK on what kind of sex toy she can insert where. Volunteers from the crowd usually disrobe on…
Dance, Dance, Dance
Feel like an evening at the ballet? Robert Altman’s The Company, a lovely and superficial performance montage, is less a movie than a series of impressions, a rich sampler of a season with one of America’s premier dance companies — the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago. There’s scandalously little by way of plot, though there is…
Buckwheat Zydeco
“Honey, down here everyone knows how to cook,” says Louisiana native Mary-Alice Culhane (Mary McDonnell) to visiting Chicagoan Chantelle (Alfre Woodard) in the 1988 film Passion Fish. Stanley “Buckwheat” Dural Jr. is one Bayou State resident who can cook in both the literal and figurative senses. In regard to the former, the Dural Jr. family…
