Toothy Grins
Once upon a time, in the town of Darkness Falls … “Wait,” you’re probably saying to yourself, “Darkness Falls is the name of the town?” Yes. Yes it is. And it’s haunted by an evil tooth fairy. Are you sure you want to know more? Okay, good. Because once you get past the inherent silliness…
Lou Reed
Lou Reed’s interpretation of Edgar Allan Poe is an all-star double-disc set that aims to modernize one of the most presciently psychological American storytellers. At more than two hours, it’s an ambitious, often wild work, teeming with almost as many names from the New York and Los Angeles glitterati as Poe characters. Even though it’s…
Mind Games
Compiled in the cold light of day, the sum of Chuck Barris’s contributions to American culture are the Top 40 ditty “Palisades Park” and his discovery that many people are willing to make complete fools of themselves in front of a TV camera. Barris’s legacy as a network producer includes such pre-Jerry Springer, pre-Survivor humiliation…
New Order
British electronic-pop pioneers New Order seem to have a problem compiling themselves. The band’s first hits collection, 1987’s Substance, got things right for the most part, featuring all of the band’s A- and B-sides to date over two CDs, but the set was marred by subpar rerecordings of classic tunes like “Temptation” and “Confusion.” Then…
Book It
Comic books and their readership have never exactly thrived in the mainstream. Just ask the guy with the Silver Surfer T-shirt and plastic Green Lantern ring who can’t find a date to this year’s Mid-Ohio-Con. But there’s a fringe beyond the fringe: a whole world of serious artists and writers who have a lot to…
Unwritten Law
Surprisingly, unplugged punk isn’t an evolutionary dead end. Even when it comes from MTV. For proof, San Diego quintet Unwritten Law offers Music From High Places, a soundtrack album from MTV’s travelogue series of the same name, in which artists of all stripes visit exotic locales and record in an unusual venue. This installment finds…
Snot Enough
“The funniest play I have ever seen in my life!” Rosie O’Donnell said of The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife. But then, Rosie’s history of questionable taste includes an asymmetrical she-mullet and a lifelong affection for the talent of Donny Osmond. Though it’s as funny as one of your better sitcoms, the show’s script suffers…
Grave
Being heavy isn’t just about tuning your guitar down until you’re tripping over the strings. It’s also about the songs you write, and after a six-year hiatus, Swedish underground legends Grave have returned to remind younger acts of this fact. Riff for riff, Back From the Grave sets a ridiculously high bar; this is the…
Could Be Verse
While we are all destined to, in Tom Lehrer’s words, “slide down the razor blade of life,” the trip is clearly more enjoyable for some than others. You can almost hear the gods chortling, as we mortals struggle to balance life’s random pains and ultimate fear (i.e., death) with all the good stuff: tax refunds,…
Skent Dukes
Leave it to a thug like Skent Dukes to make even the Chipmunks sound tough. Dropping grimy rhymes over backing vocals that sound like Alvin, Simon, and Theodore kicking it on the upper reaches of St. Clair, Dukes turns “Hush” into one of Get It Right’s many highlights. Seldom is an MC equally accomplished behind…
Blood Money
Just as writer-director Menno Meyjes’ Max was premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival, Overlook Press was shipping to bookstores Frederic Spotts’ Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics. Meyjes’ film and Spotts’ book say essentially the same thing: Adolf Hitler was a reluctant dictator, a potentially insignificant man who wanted only to spend his life…
Adam Rich
Instrumental music too often puts finesse over feeling, forsaking emotion for expertise. This isn’t the case with the debut from guitarist Adam Rich. On Foundation, which was recorded over three years, Rich proves himself to be a workmanlike player who seldom elevates virtuosity over sentiment. Sure, Rich can wail — check out “Fubar,” a hard-charging…
A Beautiful Bind
If good looks were all it took to make a winning restaurant, Austin’s Wood Fire Grille in Brecksville would be an undisputed champ. Owner Dan Campbell’s new Texas-style steak-and-chop shop is that handsome, with a sophisticated rusticity that seems more suited to California wine country than to the trailing end of a suburban shopping plaza.…
Norma Jean
Granted, it gets harder and harder to come up with a sufficiently kick-ass band name as the years go by. Still, we’ve got to wonder what Atlanta’s hardcore heroes Norma Jean were thinking when they originally christened themselves Luti-Kriss in 1997. In 2001, when Atlanta-based rap star Ludacris started throwin’ ‘bows for real, they realized…
Closing Time
It least three Northeast Ohio eateries didn’t stick around to celebrate the New Year. Newest victims of the annual winter shakeout include Indian restaurant Clay Oven in Parma, Italian restaurant La Tavola Bona in Northfield Center, and the Flat Iron Café, an Irish pub in Aurora. (Worry not, heavy drinkers: The original Flat Iron in…
Frankie Bones
When Brooklyn’s No. 1 party-starting DJ Frankie Bones veered his 2000 mix CD, You Know My Name, into a self-produced track urging us to “Get the F*%$ Up,” there was only one proper response: “Yes sir!” The veteran populist earned his stripes by initiating some of the earliest raves in America, pioneering the hard, stripped-down…
Rubber and Rhymes
James Rockwell has spent years preparing for law school, but law school doesn’t get first dibs on his heart and soul. The talented young rhymer came to the University of Akron for his undergraduate studies, but it wasn’t education that brought him to town. Hip-hop has been Rockwell’s passion since fifth grade, and when the…
The Love Buzz
It doesn’t offer the cachet of biotech, or the geek chic of the New Economy. There’s not even a respectable-sized factory involved. But in a land where the absence of entrepreneurial spirit has long been lamented, Cleveland has to take its economic opportunities where it can get them. And the Next Big Thing to rise…
Chin Music
“All journalists and critics are ants at the picnic,” Henry Rollins declares from the offices of his L.A. publishing company, 2.13.61. “I’m not curious to see what you write about me. Not curious about any review about anything I do. I don’t care. And I defy you to stop me. I would be loath to…
The Gayby Predicament
At 51, having children wasn’t at the top of Katharine Dvorak’s to-do list. But her partner of two years, Evangeline Jones, was three decades younger and felt the motherly urge. Dvorak didn’t want to stand in her way. “It would be depriving her of the chance to do this in her life,” Dvorak thought. A…
Symphony of Destruction
If “what gets magazine covers” is the primary criterion for passing muster in music these days, garage rock — with its sartorial and sonic nostalgia and its empty attitudinizing — is the future of rock. And with the recent success of bands like the Strokes, the White Stripes, and the Hives, this is fast becoming…
Hard Lesson
Donald Schulz won’t talk about his case — and it’s hard to blame him. The Cleveland State political science professor once shared a 19-page government document with a reporter, on the condition that she not publish its contents. The reporter published anyway. It was Schulz who got slapped with the lawsuit. It taught him to…
Kittie
Kittie was once dismissed as cartoonish (one critic called them “Josie & the Pussycats in Hell”), but the band has since colored outside the lines enough to silence the detractors. Pierced, dyed, and pissed off, the femmes fatales of Kittie screeched and growled their way from Canada to MTV shortly after graduating high school. The…
The Trash in the Mirror
Scene’s no better than the rock rags: I have to say that Rob Harvilla’s “Taking Out the Trash” [December 11] is laughable at best, simply because of the hypocritical stand it takes. I’ve read Scene for about 15 years and remember when it used to be a very good source for music, and not a…
The Waco Brothers/the Sadies
Not only will the Waco Brothers’ gig with the Sadies feature an opening set from Wales’s answer to Ryan Adams (read: Waco frontman Jon Langford, the patriarch of the world’s finest faux-family alt-country punk band since Uncle Tupelo), but no doubt he’ll also be joining his friends in the Sadies for a few tunes off…
Boondoggle in Waiting
Peculiar are the stories coming out about Why We So Badly Need A New Convention Center. The general tenor: We’re falling behind! We’re missing a golden opportunity! Jesus Mother Mary Joseph, we must act soon or (insert apocalyptic moment of your choice)! Yet none of these stories addresses a most basic question: Will it work?…
Marshall Crenshaw
Marshall Crenshaw used to cover an MC5 song, y’know. In his late-’70s formative years, the Detroit native dabbled in riff rock, Todd Rundgren rips, the Beatles, surf instrumentals, and whatever else caught his ear for more than half a second (to see for yourself, check the overlooked 9 Volt Years on Razor & Tie). Ultimately,…
Favorite Zings
A doe. A deer. And a pile of goat poop? Those are just a few of the costumes to be found at Sing-A-Long Sound of Music, a Rocky Horror-style, audience-participation screening of the classic Julie Andrews film, which comes to town Tuesday, January 28. The show, which debuted in London in 1999, originally attracted folks…
Home Improvement
Sipping a beer in Strongsville’s Spider Studios on a wintry Friday afternoon, Chimaira frontman Mark Hunter looks as different as he sounds these days. As his band’s new music tears through the speakers like Phil Anselmo through a six-pack, Hunter rubs sleep from his eyes (he was here until 5 a.m. before returning home for…
Last Laughs
It’s a classic scene from ’90s American cinema: Alec Baldwin, a feisty, foul-mouthed realtor in Glengarry Glen Ross, tries to fire up his downtrodden, unproductive agents after a summer of slumping home sales. Take that same scene, replace Baldwin with Ronald McDonald, and recast the agents as a breakroom of lethargic, unmotivated burger flippers from…
Disengage Rises Above
Disengage’s luck has been as hard as its music over the years. This is a band whose former label, Man’s Ruin, collapsed mere weeks after the group’s superb Obsessions Become Phobias hit shelves in mid-2000, derailing what should have been the group’s breakthrough album. At long last, though, it appears things are starting to go…
