Comic Opera
Comic book artist and Kent resident P. Craig Russell is always looking for a good story to tell. For the last 25 years, that search has landed him far from Gotham City and into the hyper-emotional world of opera. Next month Dark Horse Comics releases the latest chapter in Russell’s mammoth retelling of Richard Wagner’s…
London Broil
There’s definitely something weird going on in the British pop scene. Years after tasteful Yanks allowed classic works such as Saturday Night Fever and Grease to dissolve into our vast iconic array, villainous Limey programmers were still hyping them over there. Thus, the dual plagues of disco and ’50s rock were never halted and, far…
Penn Is Mightier
For his first film as director, The Indian Runner in 1991, Sean Penn chose as his source material Bruce Springsteen’s “Highway Patrolman,” off the album Nebraska. It was a perfect song, and it spawned a nearly perfect movie; Penn, writing his own screenplay about two brothers — one good, one bad, each inseparable from the…
Lost in the Swamp
“This is some damn fine coffee you got here in Twin Peaks. And some damn good cherry pie. But I have to tell you something, sheriff: Last night, I had a dream in which a dancing midget talked backward, thus leading me to believe that our killer is a man with long hair . .…
Sisters Christian
It’s really quite a shame that the notion of compromise gets such a bad rap in our hungry times, especially when the term itself is inherently benign and productive. According to the nearest dictionary (American Heritage, Second College Edition), the word stems from two Latin roots, com (“together”) and promittere (“to promise”), which defines it…
Electric Prunes and Pretty Things
In author Richie Unterberger’s estimation, no other decade produced as much great music as the ’60s. Of the many overlooked geniuses of that era, the author has chosen 19 to profile in his latest book, Urban Spacemen and Wayfaring Strangers: Overlooked Innovators and Eccentric Visionaries of ’60s Rock. And all of them are artists whose…
Death’s Apprentices
A slight part in his lips gives the impression that he’s about to whisper something profound. His gray hair has the dusky sheen of a lifelong smoker. Carl is lying in a casket, right arm draped peacefully across abdomen, blanket tucked to waist for his final slumber. Earlier this morning, funeral director Tom Mills noticed…
The Big Tease
“Try to dispel those rumors that I died last week in a car crash,” says Warrant singer Jani Lane one afternoon while hanging out at the Revolution, a Parma nightclub run by local guitarist Billy Morris, who joined the group eight months ago. Lane’s been fielding calls from his manager ever since stories about his…
Bar Stories
A recent dispatch from the long history of muscles inflated and tempers flared by alcohol: In the wee hours of November 13, at the Mercury Lounge, police say an intoxicated 23-year-old man twice cracked a bartender in the head with a glass and punched another guy out. When the cops arrived, the man yelled, “Here…
Eyehategod
It’s a funny name. That can’t be helped. But there’s absolutely nothing funny about Eyehategod’s artistic philosophy, which it merrily describes as “contamination through music.” Brutal hardcore metal it is, then. Black Sabbath, as usual, provides the groundwork, but Eyehategod shows only flashes of the poetic sass or sensual pull of Ozzy Osbourne and friends.…
Screening Meemies
They arrive faithfully to sit in the dark. Some on buses, almost always alone. No cineplex candy-asses, they can bask for hours in a hard-backed wooden seat with no attached cupholder, because they enjoy twisting their spines into pretzel shapes. They’re regulars at the Cinematheque, Cleveland’s only movie theater where the catchphrases are “There’s a…
The Go
Who knows what the hell it is about Detroit (could it be the simple layer of filth that seems to coat everything?), but the Motor City has inked more chapters in rock and roll’s long and weird history (both important and trivial) than just about any other ‘burg in the country. Whether it be Motown;…
Fade to Black
For 17 years, Dorothy Swanson has waged the loneliest battle: keeping good shows on television, a medium that exists as if only to taunt her. You can hear in her voice the toll such a struggle has taken on her. Her voice breaks and softens when she speaks about the demise of the organization she…
Tantric
What do you do when the driving creative force behind your young band turns out to be a raging egomaniac? Worse, that raging egomaniac thinks he’s some sort of new rock god, channeling Jim Morrison in all his blustery, pretentious, Lizard King glory? Well, if you’re Days of the New, you pretty much put up…
The Edge
The Edge can understand why places like Boulder, Chapel Hill, and Sante Fe are included in the book America’s Top-Rated Smaller Cities. But Youngstown, the burg whose official seal depicts a small stack of unmarked bills in a brown paper bag? Candace Sleight, a spokeswoman for Grey House Publishing in Connecticut, says the ratings are…
BR5-49
After getting dropped by Arista Nashville last summer, the stunningly well-received country rock sextet BR5-49, within moments of its availability, inked a deal with Sony’s alt-country imprint Lucky Dog, where it’s already working on a new studio album. The smart kids at Sony know when to back a winner. Since the mid-’90s, when it served…
You May Now Dis the Bride
A groom wipes off the greasepaint grin: I read the letter sent to you by a Juggalo fan of the ICP [“Rounding Up the Posse,” January 4]. Here is my experience with some of the Infamous Juggalos: I was married in ’98. The wedding party was getting pictures taken on the walkway outside Windows near…
Shipping News
When John Lydon quit the Sex Pistols, feeling cheated, he moved on to something he called “anti-music,” the idea being that a droning repetitive assault would hypnotize or draw listeners in to the point that their minds could begin to create their own music out of the monotony. Lydon and Public Image Limited came close…
Classic Variations
The intermission of the Cleveland Play House’s production of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull finds theater patrons so relieved that their encounter is not the usual cross between the morgue and the wax museum that they’re even willing to skip the usual obligatory scotch and soda needed to get through a “classic.” For the first half,…
Various Artists; Various Artists
Leave it to those crafty people who compile soundtracks to jump on a trend about three years after its position on the hot meter has begun to cool. After they spent a good portion of the ’90s stuffing movie tie-ins with hip-hop and metal leftovers, it seems electronica is the new all-purpose album filler. And…
Dog-Gone Good
On a culinary landscape littered with talking chihuahuas, ersatz Aztec artifacts, and ruthlessly Americanized food, Luchita’s is a refreshing tonic. Neither too homogenized to affront serious foodies nor too foreign to frighten off more placid palates, the Galindo family’s Mexican restaurants have been a welcome addition to the Northeast Ohio dining scene for nearly two…
Peter Frampton
There is perhaps no bigger stereotype of ’70s musical excess than the double live album. The format became simultaneously proof of success and a bloated embarrassment. Only a spartan few albums in this genre can lay claim to greatness and withstand the scrutiny of historical perspective. Frampton Comes Alive! is one of them, as it…
Inn Work Progress
Earthmovers were busily chewing up the landscape last week at the site of Thornburg Station, restaurateur and developer Frank Sinito’s retail and office complex in Valley View. Among other things, the Western Reserve-style buildings planned for the area between Canal Road and the Cuyahoga River, just north of the national park, will include space for…
Emanon
A four-piece from Akron, Emanon — singer Kimberly Jones, guitarist Mark Newingham, bassist Eric Heinbuch, and drummer Robert Ruman — shouldn’t be confused with Eminem, the homophobic Detroit rapper who’s garnered four Grammy nominations and has knee-jerk liberals everywhere decrying the merit of his accolades. No, Emanon is a hard rock outfit that’s the opposite…
Gambling Hall
When jazz guitarist Jim Hall performs at the Cleveland Museum of Art on January 20, it’ll be a homecoming of sorts for him. Most area jazz fans probably don’t realize it, but Hall, though born in Buffalo, was raised in Cleveland, in the East 93rd and Woodland area. He attended John Adams High School and…
A Squirrel With Nuts
When Hurricane David blew a four-pound squirrel out of its nest and into the lives of Chuck and Lou Ann Best in 1978, few could have forecast the phenomenon that would unfold. “Some friends found her after the storm,” recalls Lou Ann Best. “We just kept her warm and fed her. She was probably about…
