Scritti Politti
Scritti Politti Anomie & Bonhomie (Virgin) More than a decade after Provision, the soulful Welshman Green Gartside (who is Scritti Politti) returns with a disc as up-to-date as his earlier work. While the band’s fourth disc isn’t as radical as the material post-punker Gartside crafted in the ’80s, it’s easily as contemporary, highly crafted, and,…
Kamikaze Ground Crew
Kamikaze Ground Crew Covers (Koch) Kamikaze Ground Crew consists of seven members who draw ideas from a vast range of sources. This CD’s title refers to the fact that the album consists of covers of all sorts of music, including a pop tune by Bhutan and pieces by Satie, Stockhausen, Jimi Hendrix, Huey “Piano” Smith,…
Poets of Another Breed
Poets of Another Breed Creamed Corn (self-released) Poets of Another Breed, a six-man ensemble from Akron who, in their own words, “don’t give a damn,” aspire to be Northeast Ohio’s answer to the Beastie Boys on their debut, which was recorded by Cyde’s Shawn Hackel at his Grooveyard Studios in Akron. While many of the…
Soundbites
Send local music info and CSNY gossip to jniesel@clevescene.com.
They Saw It on TV
Handheld rotating blades can be scary, especially when they’re attached to home improvement projects undertaken by amateurs. And it doesn’t help that a plethora of TV shows depict knocking down a support wall and inserting a greenhouse as a weekend “do-it-yourself” number. That’s where The Furniture Guys, Ed Feldman and Joe L’Erario, the Laurel and…
Variations Without a Theme
Charles Yannopoulos can be reached at cyannopoulos@clevescene.com.
Grin ‘n’ Parrot
Teaching card tricks to birds doesn’t require a “full deck,” Jenny Gabel points out with a cheerfully self- deprecating tone. “I’d always thought that birds were stupid pets,” says Gabel, who was once active in training horses and dogs, but is now the ringleader of Bird Brains Performing Parrots. “A bird sits in a corner,…
Boat Show
Keith A. Joseph can be reached at kjoseph@clevescene.com.
Valley of the Dull
The subject matter is surely the stuff of which can’t-miss movies are made: Jacqueline Susann, author of the bestseller Valley of the Dolls and other jerk-off (pardon, “maddeningly sexy,” to quote Helen Gurley Brown) classic lit. There was nothing at all pedestrian about the woman, who was regaled in her day as a protofeminist and…
Hot Spots
Elaine T. Cicora can be reached at ecicora@clevescene.com.
Blowing Smoke
Andrew Putz can be reached at aputz@clevescene.com.
Side Dish
Tips are encouraged. Contact Elaine T. Cicora at ecicora@clevescene.com.
Out of the Past
Frank Kuznik can be reached at fkuznik@clevescene.com.
Techno Babbling
Of all the countries with an active dance music scene, Germany is arguably the most zealous. Back in the ’70s, a steely kind of funk called electro emerged from West Germany under the leadership of Kraftwerk, whose robotic grooves set the stage for a generation of musicians intent on implementing keyboards and sequencers into live…
The Edge
Firepower! Imperial Mayor Mike White delivered one of his inimitable pep talks last week to the city law department, after articles appeared in The Plain Dealer questioning the department’s competence. With a dramatic flourish, His Highness produced one of the offending articles and set it on fire, reducing it to ashes before the astonished attorneys.…
Heavy on the Jam
Like Widespread Panic, like Phish, and yes, like the Grateful Dead, Moe. is a jam band. It does everything long — songs, guitar solos, transitions, whatever. Yet unlike Widespread Panic and Phish (but like the Dead), Moe. sounds good on CD, long songs or short. Funny thing is, some of Moe.’s best, quirkiest stretched-out live…
ABCs and IUDs
Laura Putre can be reached at lputre@clevescene.com.
Live
Live Agora Theatre January 22 After having to reschedule its November show at the Agora due to illness, Live finally played Cleveland last Saturday night, with all the fury of rolling thunder chasing the wind. Heavily favored just a few years back as the band most likely to follow in the idealistic footsteps of U2…
Fowl Play
“Last night we were in Indianapolis, and we had a 20-minute comedy sketch halfway through our set,” says Jimmie’s Chicken Shack singer-guitarist Jimi Haha via phone from his home in Maryland, where he’s taking a day off. “Then we tried to play “High,’ but I started climbing up and surfing on the drums, and they…
Herbie Hancock
Herbie Hancock Severance Hall January 23 It’s been a few years since Herbie Hancock experimented with turntables. It’s been even longer since the beachball Afros and spacesuits. And by the time he hit the stage at Severance Hall, the only electronic gizmo Hancock brought onstage with him was a palm pilot programmed with his set…
Joe Morris’s Many Rings
Joe Morris’s Many Rings with Slander Media Speak in Tongues January 21 Out with the bassist and drummer and in with the alto sax/flutist, bassoonist, and accordion player/sampler. The word standard doesn’t even remotely apply to Many Rings, the chamber-free music group guitarist Joe Morris has assembled recently. As mouth-watering as the prospect of instrumentation…
Warren Zevon
Warren Zevon Life’ll Kill Ya (Artemis) Warren Zevon is still up to his old tricks. Scan the list of song titles on his new album, Life’ll Kill Ya, and you’ll find a series of wordy declarations as biting and satirical as anything in his catalog: “I Was in the House When the House Burned Down,”…
