Dead Men Drinking
Mayor Tom George sounds weary. He presides over a congested suburb where nearly every structure, street, and sewer is 100 years old. Its few factories are either dead or walking with a limp. Its retail is slim and struggling. Aside from thrift stores, it has but one thriving industry: bars. And now the Lakewood City…
On Stage
Adaptation — Shakespeare once outlined the seven ages of man in his play As You Like It, but he probably never imagined them being acted out as a game show hosted by a Wink Martindale clone. That’s OK, since Elaine May had the idea herself back in the 1960s and turned it into a one-act…
Moe
Restraint seems an odd proposition for any group painted into the jam-band corner. It is, after all, a genre in which a road-weary hash of musical excess and instrumental prowess lures the nomadic, barefoot masses like so many tie-dyed moths to the flame. Yet Moe’s style has become more contained, even as the group has…
Stupid Kid Tricks
Not part of that proud hippie tradition: I am not sure what the purpose of “Woosteria!” was, but it did not deserve the front page [January 26]. If most of what happened in the story was true, it seems that the only point was that racists come in a variety of forms. I am a…
No More Noodling
It was somewhere between the crab cakes and the insalata mista that a neighbor’s cell phone sprang to life. “Yeah, hi!” he boomed into it — although in all honesty, it didn’t take a great set of pipes to be heard across the 50-seat dining room. “We’re having dinner at Bella Lucca. Bel-la Luc-ca .…
The Hoods
A popular rhetorical question asks, “If an airplane’s black box is indestructible, why don’t they just make the entire plane out of the indestructible stuff?” Here’s why, smartass: Too much heavy metal just weighs you down. Sacramento’s Hoods learned that lesson the hard way on 2003’s Pray for Death LP. Dedicated to the notion that…
The Dating Game
“Valentine’s Day is just a heightened date day,” declares Nancy Kirsch, co-author of The It’s Just Lunch Guide to Dating in Cleveland. “And sometimes the expectations are very high.” Remember that as you prepare for Monday. Also remember to wash your hair, trim your nails, and freshen your breath before your big date. Those are…
On View
NEW Magic/Mystery: Recent Paintings by Patrick Kelly — Patrick Kelly’s new works are not action paintings in the expressionist sense, but a sense of movement does pervade them. The Cleveland-based artist doesn’t drip latex à la Pollock, but his dark, somber oil paintings and mixed-media wall hangings resonate with spiritual life by suggesting vast cosmic…
Sammy de Leon y su Orquesta
After a low-key inaugural month, South Beach Mango’s (formerly the Russian Tea Room), a Latin dance club, goes high-profile this weekend. Before and after a live set by Sammy de Leon y su Orquesta, DJ Israel will spin Salsa, Merengue, Bachata, and house. If you don’t know how to dance, learn how at a group…
This Week’s Day-By-Day Picks
Thursday, February 10 We never really paid much attention to how animals get it on. Oh, we’ve seen the Discovery Channel programs on the mating habits of zebras and various birds, but we never gave much thought to birth control and stuff. After the wine-tasting sessions going on at tonight’s Animal Attractions program at the…
Music to Our Mouths
The banalities of “dinner theater” aside, we’ve always advocated the tasty pairing of food and tunes. So we’re happy to spread the word about some good-sounding eats offered by two of the city’s premier music venues. At Wilbert’s Food and Music (812 Huron Rd. East, 216-902-4663), Mardi Gras has come and gone, but the kitchen…
Sage Francis
A white guy with a journalism degree, rapper Sage Francis is a writer and a rhymer. On A Healthy Distrust, his solo debut for Epitaph, a predominantly punk label, the New England native teams up with producer Dangermouse (of Grey Album fame) for “Gunz Yo,” the first song to address hip-hop’s firearms fixation in academic…
Oh My Goddess!
Judy Tenuta’s idea of a romantic Valentine’s Day requires a vase of red roses, bottles of bubbly champagne, and five of her horniest boyfriends in a hotel room in Paris. “But we’d have to go to the Eiffel Tower one night,” says Tenuta, before a sudden realization. “Wait a minute! Who am I kidding? I…
Nostalgic Nightmare
Three days after a full moon, the American Werewolves are in human form, dressed all in black, at one of Cleveland’s best spots for all-you-can-eat meat: B.D.’s Mongolian Barbeque. As one might expect, burly frontman Trevor Moment has a bowl full of spicy beef. The two other members present — guitarist Brendan Less and drummer…
Brian McKnight
He calls his latest album Gemini, but Brian McKnight has had a split musical personality for a while, and it hasn’t always been an asset. Ever since he teamed up with P. Diddy on 1997’s Anytime, McKnight has always made room for a trendy hip-hop collaboration or three. So do plenty of other R&B romantics,…
Washed-Up Comic
2/9-2/13 When he’s not telling jokes onstage, Daniel Tosh can usually be found riding the waves. And of the two, he’d rather be surfing. “But stand-up pays much better,” he says. “So like most artists, I go where the money’s at.” His job takes him away from his California home and into clubs around the…
Piano Men
Right now, the mild-mannered English trio Keane is the hot U.K. export for American listeners counting down the days to the release of Coldplay’s third album later this year. On its debut, Hopes and Fears, the band offers just the right kind of extravagantly earnest melancholy that the past decade has led us to expect…
John Hammond
John Hammond is well known as a blues interpreter — one of the very best of his generation. He’s less well known as a songwriter, but as In Your Arms Again indicates, that’s slowly beginning to change. Hammond’s last release, 2003’s Ready for Love, featured his very first original track, “Slick Crown Vic.” His new…
Strike Force
2/10-2/13 For years, the bad-boy antics of Pete Weber (pictured) embarrassed the Professional Bowlers Association. Not anymore. The trash-talking, crotch-grabbing Weber is now the poster child for the league’s edgier image. “They’re making it more exciting for the fans to get involved in the game,” says Dawn Emerson, spokesperson for AMF Riviera Lanes, which hosts…
Cooking With Cattle Decapitation
Given its vile lyrics (“Human feces I season with morning eye crust and navel lint”), outlandish onstage antics (custard-spewing singer Travis Ryan could coin the term “reyogurtation”), and profoundly unappetizing album art (the cover for the band’s latest, Humanure, looks like it sounds, only much, much worse), San Diego’s Cattle Decapitation seems like the type…
The Wedding Present
Just in time for the ’90s revival, Wedding Present frontman David Gedge has decided to revisit his alternative-rock salad days by ditching his recent project, Cinerama, and returning to the outfit where he first made his name. Why he’s chosen to do so remains a mystery: the Wedding Present’s first LP in eight years sounds…
Baartman Got Back
2/12-2/26 Saartjie Baartman, the real-life 19th-century protagonist of Pulitzer winner Suzan-Lori Parks’ Venus, was taken from her South African home, shipped to London, renamed Venus Hottentot, and turned into a sideshow freak primarily known for her superhuge ass. “This play is a fictionalized telling,” clarifies Jyana S. Gordon, who directs the Cleveland Public Theatre production…
The Brutal Gourmet
When Cattle Decapitation called its third album To Serve Man, it wasn’t joking. Here’s guitarist Josh Elmore’s recipe for delicious pumpkin curry. Ingredients: · 1 tablespoon vegetable oil · 1 onion, sliced · 4 garlic cloves, crushed · 1 teaspoon ground cumin · 2 teaspoons ground coriander · 1 fresh green chili, finely chopped ·…
Ed Harcourt
When much of a musician’s art focuses on decadent layers of fancy instrumentation, it’s often difficult to separate the bells and whistles from their more sparse foundation. And so when said artist decides to downplay all the lush flourishes and studio accoutrements, will the resulting music still be interesting? This is the question that U.K.…
What a Rush
2/11-2/26 In Chagrin Valley Little Theatre’s production of Rush Limbaugh in Night School (which opens Friday), the loudmouthed radio host slaps on a phony goatee and enrolls in a Spanish class, in hopes of thwarting the advances of a new conservative Latino radio program edging in on his audience. Along the way, the chubby chat…
On Tape From Cleveland
Cleveland has a new television show that will showcase unsigned local and national talent. The Unsigned will tape its first live segments Sunday, February 13, at the Hi-Fi Club (11729 Detroit Ave., Lakewood). Starting the week of March 7, the locally produced, biweekly show will air on Adelphia Cable in Cleveland, Cox Cable in the…
Clouds Forming Crowns
Like many brothers, Tim and Todd Tobias are skilled at finishing one another’s thoughts. They’ve collaborated on music since childhood, most notably in Guided by Voices — Tim played bass and Todd produced a handful of the defunct indie-rock darling’s recent records. The duo’s latest project takes its name from the title of last year’s…
Just One Hitch
One should expect little from the man who has directed an Olsen twins movie (It Takes Two, the one with Steve Guttenberg, no less), Matthew Perry’s first Friends-to-film entry (Fools Rush In, its title an apparent nod to audiences who went to see it), and Sweet Home Alabama, one of those interchangeable romantic comedies located…
Eighteen Visions
Reviews of Obsession, the recent release from Eighteen Visions, invariably liken the Orange County-based Hot Topic heartthrobs to the Stone Temple Pilots. That would be an encouraging comparison for a fledgling glam-grunge hybrid, but because 18V once played concrete-cracking hardcore, some longtime followers bristle at hearing the band’s bazooka breakdowns replaced by a velvet revolver.…
Hydra
Modern rock generally means “rock with half a riff and plenty of weak, poppy conventions, big choruses, and an over-reliance on forced melodies heard ad nauseam on crap radio.” Hydra plays what modern rock should be: straight-up jams that’ve kept pace with the evolution of hard rock. Hydra has been playing together for two years,…
Same Old Song
When did we first encounter a feel-good film that united delinquent kids, a devoted (if professionally frustrated) teacher, and the transformative power of music? Was it Julie Andrews? Could it have been the spirited, soft-hearted Maria and her Austrian brood, trilling their way up the hills above the abbey? Whether or not it was first,…
Bet the Under
A decade ago, when Ed Van der Kuil got his big break at Undercurrents, Cleveland’s annual music fest, he didn’t realize that it was his band’s spirit that would ultimately be broken. After performing at the fest, Dink, Van der Kuil’s group of Kent electro rockers, signed a deal with Capitol Records. The band had…
Cute Is Enough
For those viewers hailing from the lucrative under-six demographic, Pooh’s Heffalump Movie will prove to be a suitably sweet addition to the Winnie the Pooh cinematic canon. The youngest of them certainly won’t recognize the story’s central message — accept others, especially purple elephant-looking creatures with dreadlocks, for who they are — though they certainly…
The Moaners
Before the recent release of the Moaners’ debut album Dark Snack, Mississippi native Melissa Swingle was best known as the lead singer and guitarist of Trailer Bride. And while that band isn’t quite dead and buried, it’s definitely on life support. “I was kind of in a pattern where I started to feel like I…
Next Best Thing
When shot with verve and skill, so that we can feel the heat and passion of the moment, a concert film is the next best thing to being there. That’s the way it is with Lightning in a Bottle, a Martin Scorsese-produced documentary that captures an extraordinary evening in February 2003, when some of the…
C.J. Chenier
If you’re one who’s down with the zydeco sound, you owe one to the Chenier family. It was accordionist Clifton Chenier who basically created the music’s modern incarnation. The mixing of Creole folk with R&B and blues was a great way to please southwestern Louisiana audiences in the ’50s and ultimately landed the senior Chenier…
King Nothing
A bank needed to repossess a plane from a Columbus health-care company, which owned a pair of jets worth more than $20 million. Shortly before, the company had sold one off. The bank had to move before the other disappeared as well. So Mark Dottore hired three pilots and boarded a small plane. They flew…
More Like Boring Bag Ladies!
If the story line of Brawling Bag Ladies seems familiar, that’s because it is. Maybe the producers of this direct-to-video enterprise thought they could pull a fast one on a small-time film critic from Ohio, but they were way wrong. You see, I consider myself somewhat of an expert on homeless-fighting-homeless videos. It’s not a…
Josh Groban
Our only real complaint with the new school of young neoclassical crooners is that they’re so damn conservative in their choice of repertoire. That 23-year-old Josh Groban — the curly-haired straight guy to Michael Bublé’s pompadoured wiseacre — can sing is beyond question, and in all the morning-show radio interviews we’ve heard him do, he…
Private Dick
At 6 a.m., a silver Beemer pulls into the parking lot of a fast-food joint. The car door opens and out steps a well-dressed man, his bookish features a mix of anger and nerves. He walks toward a van with tinted windows and climbs into the passenger seat. Behind the wheel is Mike Lewis, a…
Raisin Issues
Since we’re on the cusp of another Oscar-night blowout, larded with sweaty desperation and tearful self-congratulation, it’s worth noting that awards for creative achievements are, at best, an iffy proposition. Who’s to say that Hilary Swank’s performance is better than Annette Bening’s, when there are no objective criteria? And even though this page offers its…
Letter Kills
As the major-label feeding frenzy continues over bands that flaunt more hair dye than a local PTA chapter, more and more groups that should have experienced their growing pains on the indie circuit are finding themselves launched into the big leagues at Warped Tour velocity. Count Letter Kills among the not-ready-for-prime-time players. The quintet coalesced…
Suing a 7-Year-Old
As a general rule, suing a seven-year-old won’t score you any points with St. Peter. But Mary Ellen Michaels and her lawyer, Judson Hawkins, already have guaranteed reservations at the Burning Lake of Fire Spa & Resort. Our saga began when Michaels was rollerblading down a Metroparks bike path in Strongsville last spring. She came…
Born Identity
Believe it or not, there was a time when some people thought goodness could triumph over political corruption and big-business ownership of the government. This concept seems impossibly naive these days, especially in light of recent under-the-table payments to journalists for favorable coverage of administration initiatives and the eagerness of both Republicans and Democrats to…
American Head Charge
American Head Charge tries too hard sometimes. There are six of them where there could be four, and they used to be heavy into shock theatrics onstage — hurled pig heads and shotguns fired at the crowd. These were just a couple of the things distracting metal fans from the band’s crunching rockers, which were…
