Rescue 9-11
Normally, these year-in-TV columns are a breezy, easy write — a plea for good shows buried somewhere in an embittered litany of bad ones. In recent years, it has felt as though the proliferation of channels and choices has given us only more of the wretched and less of the watchable; satellite television proves it’s…
Art and Artifice
The Mediterranean decor at Mosaica, Westlake’s wildly popular new restaurant, may not be authentic, but that’s not to say it’s unimpressive. From the Corinthian columns guarding the painstakingly distressed front door, to the coarse limestone tiles and intricate mosaics that pave the floor of the sky-lit rotunda, the place radiates the romance of an ancient…
Down, Not Out
If you walked into the Grovewood Tavern on a recent Wednesday night, you’d swear someone was playing an old 45 on the jukebox — some vintage acoustic Mississippi blues from the 1910s or ’20s. But all the foot stompin’, the wailin’ harmonica, and the bawlin’ guitar comes not from a needle dancing across a weathered…
Small World
The sounds pop and stutter out of tinny-tiny speakers everywhere. Glitchy, itchy beats blare from micro boomboxes key-chained to bicycle handlebars and school backpacks. Chunky guitar rhythms and airy, kittenish vocal harmonies ring out on bright translucent pocket CD players, scooter radios, and music-activated game systems. If rap’s arrival in mainstream America was announced with…
Foul Play for Airplay?
Next to Art Modell, Cleveland radio is perhaps this town’s favorite whipping boy. And generally receiving the most lashes are the urban stations, WENZ and WZAK, which are perpetually berated by local artists for not supporting their own and for proffering lukewarm, homogenized programming. So why do these stations play what they play? Why do…
Ice-Cold Woody
We’d love to ask Mr. Potato Head just how he manages all those complicated moves in Disney on Ice’s Toy Story 2, which premieres January 9 at Gund Arena. But alas, the folks at Disney won’t grant requests for interviews with the cast’s characters (it has something to do with them being toys and not…
Robert Randolph and the Family
Robert Randolph may be the most original artist to erupt from contemporary music since Jimi Hendrix shouldered a white Stratocaster and played left-handed electric rock-and-roll lightning. Randolph’s instrument and style of choice are decidedly different from Hendrix’s; he plays the pedal steel, a guitar long associated with the mournful weep of country music, and he…
Dressed for Distress
For as long as men have slain beasts to prove themselves worthy, brides have gone gaga over their wedding day. Now, thanks to TV shows like Entertainment Tonight and A Wedding Story, and a slew of slick bridal magazines featuring the latest celebrity weddings, blushing brides have become high-maintenance, whip-cracking divas, obsessed with planning the…
Katy Moffatt
Every now and again, atypical singer-songwriters break through the dense walls of mainstream success. Willie Nelson did it. Lyle Lovett came close. But Katy Moffatt hasn’t even put a scratch on the bulwark. It appears that this country-folk-blues-pop-rock artist is destined to remain within the confines of unconventional country, right next to the likes of…
Royal‘s Screw-Ups
Had The Royal Tenenbaums been made by a first-time filmmaker unburdened by acclaim or expectation, it could be heralded — and then, just as easily, dismissed — as a light, literary exercise in filmmaking that’s as pleasant as it is frustrating. Its tale of a dysfunctional family of geniuses, torn asunder and then brought back…
Ray Manzarek
Ray Manzarek is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and he didn’t win the honor simply because he was Jim Morrison’s baby-sitter. Indeed, Manzarek is evidence that the Doors were a band far more than a musical backdrop for the headline-grabbing antics of the group’s manic lead singer, as the very…
Fake Out
Impostor’s been sitting on the shelf for a year and a half, and before that it was a short intended as part of a larger trilogy, so it arrives in theaters already bearing a fetid stench. It helps less that it arrives the first week of the new year, a dumping ground where studios bury…
Dokken
In honor of Dokken’s return to Cleveland, as it celebrates its 20th anniversary, we thought we’d pay tribute to the days when the band ruled the airwaves by offering up our list of the Top 10 Hair-Metal Songs of all time. C’mon, feel the noise. 1. Mötley Crüe, “Shout at the Devil.” The best song…
Sly Foxx
When he first auditioned for Any Given Sunday director Oliver Stone to play quarterback Willie Beamen, an embittered bench-warmer prone to fits of vomiting before each snap, Jamie Foxx was sure he’d blown it. Stone, as subtle as an icepick to the cornea, said as much — loud enough so Foxx, walking away with head…
Starsailor
Meet the new Supertramp, far more trampy than super, and far more melodramatic than a dorm full of starry-eyed, angst-ridden film students. British, too. Wee-yo. The press is pumped for these nimrods, what with Super Sensitive Guys like Coldplay and Travis sweepin’ the nation with their gently weepin’ guitars and violently weepin’ lyrics. Starsailor’s the…
The Lepers of Chester Township
Hal Elston answered the phone at 4:45 a.m., his voice thick with sleep. Yes, he told the Chester Township police officer, Marcus Moorer was home. Why? The cop ignored the question and asked how soon Hal could meet him at the front door. “Give me 15 minutes,” Elston replied. “Make it five.” Elston dressed and…
Teenage Fanclub
Hard to believe it’s been a decade since Teenage Fanclub first graced the world with its shimmer-pop, son-of-Big-Star opus, Bandwagonesque, when the band held the distinction of being the “hip” Geffen band between Sonic Youth and Nirvana. While the days of major label conquest may be over for these melodious Scotsmen, you gotta at least…
Bars, Drunks & Videotape
It was 1 a.m., and Tom Leneghan wanted to talk. Leneghan, who co-owns one Tremont bar and has plans for a second, was yelling outside Angel Cuevas’s Professor Street home on December 14. Apparently, he was irate because Cuevas told the Free Times that new bars were devouring Tremont’s residential parking. “I’m tired of you…
The Globe Unity Orchestra
The Globe Unity Orchestra was — intermittently between 1966 and the late 1980s — a truly remarkable thing: a big, big band playing free music. They weren’t totally free, of course; there was some structure. But for the most part, the Orchestra, under the leadership of pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach, gathered the finest improvising musicians…
Waaah!
The folks inside Auburn Community Church are not here to praise the Lord. They’re here, these 150 or so residents of Auburn Township, because they’re mad as hell. They’ve gathered to assail a proposed 430-home development that would increase housing in the sparsely populated township by nearly 50 percent. Dressed up as a public hearing…
Survivalist
The rate at which trends come and go in reggae is enough to make one’s head spin — almost as much as the potent Jamaican ganja that fuels many of the genre’s leading artists. Sounds on the cutting edge in Jamaica often take a couple of years for most American ears to become accustomed to…
People of the Year
There’s a great scene in Steve Martin’s 1987 film Roxanne, in which Martin’s character puts a coin into a newspaper box, screams when he sees the headlines, and pays to put the paper back. It’s true that bad news takes precedence, eclipsing the numerous honorable deeds occurring every day. Still, despite all appearances, the bulk…
Defending Public Schools
Who sez there’s no class in the classroom? I am very disturbed by the comment made in “Plaid Skirt Welfare” [November 29]. The mother of a student who attends Our Lady of Angels said, “I can’t send my kids to the Cleveland public schools. They’re terrible. All those teachers have no manners and no class.…
Flexing Those Abs
Twentieth-century abstract artists often wanted to be seen as revolutionaries, the “bad boys” of the art world. Abandoning traditional subjects and methods, they sought to tap into visions engendered by spontaneous emotions (Freud, the subconscious, surrealism all were in the air). It is this rejection of conventionality and established artistic processes that makes their methodically…
