Methods of Mayhem
It’s a rainy winter day, and Sean Carney’s voice is as downcast as the sky. “I’ve felt, over the last few years, a real lack of joy as far as indie rock music goes,” says Carney, a longtime fixture in the Cleveland music scene as head of Razak Solar System and now one-half of Sean…
Tales of the Trail
Lots of folks enjoy a walk in the woods, but when that walk goes on for 2,160 miles, it’s worth talking about. Patty Jackson will do just that on Thursday, February 7, when she recounts “An Appalachian Odyssey” at the Happy Days Visitor Center. Jackson is the 53-year-old Hudson woman who embarked on an April-to-October…
Devil in the Duds
It takes more than talent to be a rock star. It takes pants. Cool pants. Cool pants make careers. Who could forget Robert Plant’s crotch-smothering jeans, which practically introduced the singer’s manhood as the unofficial fifth member of Led Zeppelin? Or how about George Michael’s butt-defining leather duds, which made Michael’s ass such a key…
Trash Talk
Derf’s weekly comic strip The City has always leaned toward the repugnant side. So it’s no surprise that his first graphic novella (it’s a fancy word for comic book) comes replete with maggot soup, bags of exploding trash, and an overflowing porta-john. Trashed is an autobiographical tale of the cartoonist’s stint as a garbage man…
The Dishes
Girls love Wire. Boys do, too, of course, but the ladies really dig those wizened Brit art-punks. Indeed, Wire is perhaps the band with the strongest influence on many of the best female-fronted groups of the last decade — namely Elastica, Sleater-Kinney, and Chicago’s the Dishes. And it’s really not that hard to figure out…
Banging Bigotry
In this time of patriotism, Monster’s Ball is a stark little oasis of misery to remind you that America sometimes sucks and its denizens aren’t all heroes. Featuring painstaking attention to the copious warts of this big, proud country, the film moseys down South to issue the staggering proclamation that there’s racism in our midst!…
The Winter Reggae Fest
Back in 1973, when Roger Steffens picked up his first album by Bob Marley, there was no way he could have known how it was destined to change his life. Close to 30 years later, Steffens is considered a leading authority not only on the life of Marley, but also on the whole of reggae…
Damaged Goods
At the risk of repeating the obvious, Collateral Damage, held from its original October release date after the terrorist attacks, feels dated in the post-September 11 world. But it would have felt passé and unnecessary regardless; it’s the sort of film Michael Dudikoff, Chuck Norris, and their ilk cranked out on a near-monthly basis when…
Stacey Earle and Mark Stuart
Stacey Earle and Mark Stuart met in Nashville in 1991 at a workshop for struggling songwriters. Why should Earle have struggled to break in as a songsmith, you ask? Isn’t she Steve Earle’s little sister? Sure, but in 1991, Steve’s career was in a shambles. His personal life was a morass of heroin abuse that…
Devil‘s Due
Ever since his debut film Cronos, Spanish director Guillermo del Toro has been the focus of much undue adulation among critics and the Internet community of self-professed horror geeks. The problem is that del Toro’s work thus far simply doesn’t measure up to this kind of talk. Cronos’s biggest novelty was that it was bilingual;…
The Chemical Brothers
The Chemical Brothers’ trip has been neither particularly long nor all that strange. In fact, each of the duo’s four albums since 1995’s Exit Planet Dust — including the new Come With Us — has been an extension and logical progression of its predecessor. From the electro-rock extravaganza of the Chemicals’ commercial breakthrough Dig Your…
Drug Overdose
Three and a half years ago, Mark Schwartz learned that CVS was pulling out of his Fairview Park strip center. The news, delivered by a maintenance man, took Schwartz by surprise. A drugstore of some kind had occupied the space since 1947, and CVS had seven years left on its lease. The company continues to…
Kasey Chambers
Critics are getting passionate about Kasey Chambers. On the one side is the “Next Lucinda Williams” school of thought. On the other is the inevitable backlash. “Chambers can’t hold a candle to Lucinda,” skeptics bray. Yeah, and John Prine isn’t as good as Bob Dylan. So what? Can’t we simply appreciate both stellar artists for…
Wolf With No Fangs
Mike White enters the Wyndham Hotel meeting room in jeans and blazer, the uniform of the retired statesman, and offers a forced hello. The assembled media returns his greeting with the enthusiasm of a court-ordered drunk-driving class. “C’mon, you haven’t seen me in a month,” White responds, disappointed by the lack of electricity for this,…
Machine Head
Machine Head has had some bad fortune, but it’s also made some bad decisions. The band’s untoward luck includes being blown off the stage by its opening act while touring in support of its often (and rightly) reviled 1999 album The Burning Red. That opening act? Some unknown band from Des Moines, of all places,…
Christian Soldiers
Forty-six years ago, Chris Manofski left his home in Yugoslavia, slipped over the mountains into Greece, and waited in a refugee camp for a new life in the new world. With help from a step-uncle in Ohio, Manofski immigrated to Lorain. He was 20 years old. The city was good to Manofski. He got a…
Burnt by the Sun
Burnt by the Sun doesn’t seem like much at first. Its blend of hardcore, thrash, and grind stays right within the parameters of “extreme” metal as it’s been practiced since Napalm Death’s Scum exploded across the metal landscape 15 years ago. At times, these players go real fast, with no regard for melodic integrity or…
Our Lady of Lemons
Ms. Oldsmobile Cutlass still has some life left in her, though her chrome is dented and her satiny blue skirt edged in rust lace. A former family car, she has many fond memories of trips to the supermarket and the Grand Canyon, the kids in back, flogging each other with rolled-up road atlases. Old age…
The Party of Helicopters
The Party of Helicopters sound like a band that wanted to be Iron Maiden before realizing that would mean having to write songs about ancient mariners and shit. And so they’ve tossed aside all the cartoonishness of their metal heroes and substituted the introspection and emotional volatility of emo’s forebears. The outcome is a blend…
If White Were White
Fond remembrances of Mayor Mike: Andrew Putz’s article “Why Mike White Shouldn’t Be Forgiven” [January 10] was very distasteful and biased. I live in Akron and would love to have a mayor like Mr. White here. He’s done more for Cleveland than any other former mayor. White was a very tough-minded, straight-to-the-point guy who got…
Portraits in Black
Great theater, the kind that brands our psyches, invariably results from the unfettered collision of id and inspiration. An old cynic’s preoccupation with a teenage martyr led to the majestic poetry of George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan. The fleeting image of a disappointed belle, waiting hopelessly in the moonlight for her beau, evolved into that…
Flame On
When Joe Quesada, writer and illustrator of comic books, went to work as a freelance contractor for Marvel Comics three years ago, he found the so-called House of Ideas in ruin. The comic-book industry was, as Quesada recalls, “going down the toilet”: Every month, 10 to 15 percent of readers were moving out and moving…
Flavor Bursts
The taste explosions begin subtly enough. Boom: A wave of sweetness. BOOM: A blast of garlic. KA-BOOM: A wall of heat. And that’s only from one bite. We pause a moment to appreciate the rush, and then, with chopsticks in hand, we pluck another bite from the bowl, raise it to our lips, and let…
Repast With a Past
The sleigh had tipped and the horse had bolted, and our band of weary travelers was left standing by the side of the road. Luckily, as we huddled just outside the little town of Wheatfield, our plight was discovered by local dairy farmer Jacob Meredith, who sent his wife, Hannah, to fetch us, feed us,…
Soul Survivor
Solomon Burke is upbeat, persuasive, his conversation affirming his place in soul music history. He talks to spread the word of God, no matter God’s denomination. He talks to do good works, whether spearheading a food drive at the Rock Hall or flying to Boston on his own dime to do a benefit for a…
