Where’s the Love?
In September, the George Gund Foundation approved a round of grants totaling $5.5 million. The venerable trust shared the wealth with 108 recipients in all, ranging from the Foundation Fighting Blindness ($2 million) to Shoes for Kids ($7,500). Since 1952, Gund has given away $384 million, and it is one of the few institutions that…
Rocked-N-Loaded 2
When the frontman for the Philadelphia Experiment bellows that “There’s something to be said for music that knocks you on your ass” on one of the many fine cuts that propel Rock and Roll Purgatory’s Rocked-N-Loaded 2, it sounds like the compilation’s mission statement. Ripe with tales of blazing sphincters and marauding fire ants, Rocked-N-Loaded…
Smoking Guns
Buckethead could kick Slash’s ass: Saw the new Guns N’ Roses in Columbus and was blown away [Soundbites, November 20]. Axl really sounds better now than he did during GNR’s supposed prime. Is this the same band that played bars and sleazy clubs back in the late ’80s? No. Does this band musically blow those…
Katy Moffatt
Singer-songwriter Katy Moffatt is the exception to nearly every rule the music industry has to offer, as her 25-plus-year career has defied genre classification, earning her a devoted audience, deserved acclaim, and one unlikely accomplishment after another. Moffatt’s amazingly diverse background has included roles in movies such as Billy Jack, Hard Country, and The Thing…
Funky Drummer
Bring in ‘Da Noise, Bring in ‘Da Funk isn’t just about Savion Glover’s happy feet. While the Tony Award-winning Broadway show owes a great deal of its success to the tap dancer, the rhythm, the poetry, the music, and the energy of the entire Noise/Funk troupe are what’s kept it on the road for more…
Parker & Lily
If one accepts the premise that songwriting is therapeutic, then the works of Parker Noon and Lily Wolfe provide the soundtrack of couples counseling gone horribly — and beautifully — awry. Noon and Wolfe, known professionally as Parker & Lily on 2001’s Hello Halo and this year’s stunning Here Comes Winter, use the quirks and…
Zine Scene
Spider-Man would poop his Spideypants if he took a peek inside underground comic books: sex, drugs, rock and roll. You know, real-life stuff. Stuff that the webhead and his costumed pals never seem to encounter in their fantasy world — unless, of course, there really is a world out there populated by gigantic-breasted, spandex-clad superwomen…
Boot Camp Clik/Das Efx
True hip-hop, they say, isn’t on wax — it’s on stage. That ephemeral element has been the drawing power of the Lyricist Lounge tours, a tradition dense with bling-free underground standouts. This year’s featured players are Boot Camp Clik, who earned the spotlight as the talent-heavy Black Moon posse, spitting over dark, jazzy, Jamaican-tinged Beatminerz…
Classic Misstep
Those who seek a polar opposite to Michael Caine’s kind-but-firm patriarch Dr. Wilbur Larch in The Cider House Rules will find it in Jim Broadbent’s horrid, one-eyed headmaster, Wackford Squeers, in the new adaptation of Nicholas Nickleby. Author John Irving cribbed extensively from Charles Dickens to create his St. Cloud’s orphanage, and now — although…
Tony Levin
So what does a musician do after a few months of arena dates? Well, if you’re bassist, cellist, and Chapman Stick player Tony Levin, you get right back on the road. This time you exchange the comforts of a well-appointed Peter Gabriel tour bus for more modest transport and embark upon the “Snowtires” tour in…
Honeymoon? Sweet!
According to various unreliable Internet sources, Just Married co-stars Ashton Kutcher (forever to be known as the star of Dude, Where’s My Car?) and Brittany Murphy are now actually planning to be married. If this isn’t a Fox publicity stunt, it’ll be a shame that they’ll have to look back and tell the kids that…
Various Artists / Dot Allison
During musical periods when no single genre dominates, artists often look to earlier styles for inspiration — and judging by Electro Nouveau and We Are Science, synthpop, that quintessentially ’80s approach, is getting ready for another close-up. Whether this news is good or grisly is debatable, at this point. But what’s ultimately cheering about these…
Adapt This
Adaptation is the most overrated movie of 2002 (of all time?), hailed by people who should know better. Either film critics have been suckered in by its gimmick (Being John Malkovich screenwriter Charlie Kaufman can’t adapt a book for the big screen and winds up writing himself into his screenplay, genius!), or they’re too afraid…
The Sea and Cake
One Bedroom starts out perky — almost too much so. Like that little dog, Chester, who constantly kissed up to Spike in the Tom ‘n’ Jerry cartoons, “Four Corners” opens up the record with an insistent hook, a tug on your sleeve that says, “C’mon, guys! If you forgive us for making that mediocre record,…
Ground Zero Hour
Spike Lee’s adaptation of David Benioff’s 2001 novel The 25th Hour hews closely to the original tale, which the author has adapted in screenplay form: Montgomery Brogan, a working-class white boy who dreamed of being a New York City firefighter till he fell into the soft pile of easy money made from peddling heroin, has…
The Clean
If only all aspects of globalization spread the way the punk virus of the late ’70s did, when rebellious creativity infiltrated every community with a radio and a pop-music tradition. Everyone who wanted punk got it, and everyone who cared to remade it in their own image. New Zealand’s the Clean basically founded post-punk’s Kiwipop…
Straining Day
“Cops die daily, and they die bad,” barks manic police Lieutenant Henry Oak (Ray Liotta) to undercover narcotics officer Nick Tellis (Jason Patric), revealing both his hardened ‘tude and a little confusion when it comes to adverbs. Welcome to Narc, Paramount Pictures’ bid for a gritty, post-Training Day dirty-cop thriller — a passable exercise in…
Saint Etienne
Saint Etienne traffics in opposites: A product of dismal Thatcher-era England, the trio buried its late-’80s angst in candied dance-pop that merged disco’s feel-good throb with girl-group élan and ’60s-pop melodies. On 1998’s sparkling Good Humor, the group hooked up with Cardigans producer Tore Johansson at the exact moment when dance music faced a fair…
Latin Love
“What’s that word you used to describe this stuff?” scoffed a slightly sullen companion, picking at a thick, corn-flour tortilla. “‘Subtle’? I guess that’s critic-speak for bland.” Well . . . yes and no. After one lunch-hour trip, two dinner visits, and a fairly exhaustive sampling of the Central and South American menu at Tremont’s…
The Jimmie Jack Band
Jimmie Jack is the antithesis of the pretty-boy pop vocalist. While the boy/girl themes that predominate here may suggest a softer stereotype, Jack’s brawny, gravel-edged pipes are pushed toward overdrive most of the time on 3 Kords. Jack’s band — a high-energy trio consisting of Jack on guitar and lead vocals, Chris Riemenschneider handling drums,…
Vanity Fare
As far as he can remember, he always wanted to be an actor. To him, being an actor was better than being president of the United States. Even before he first wandered into the high school auditorium for an after-school audition, he wanted to be one of them. It was there he belonged. To him…
Various Artists
Let’s face it, the 409 collective’s mission statement — “fusing form with function, idea with object, signal with noise” — sounds like a slogan from an Ikea ad. Thankfully, though, 409 has packed a lot more substance into this compilation of minimal electronic music than the Swedish put into their scrawny, post-modern home furnishings. Matt…
Make Room for Piebald
Piebald’s music has always been a tough sell. When the quartet emerged from Boston’s hardcore scene in the mid-’90s, it was more interested in playing its own quirky melodies than obeying the hardcore conventions of straight-ahead riffing and roaring, guttural vocals. Piebald’s crunchy guitar parts possessed the genre’s fiery urgency, but also contained a yearning…
Iron Men
In casual conversation, it’s difficult to nail just what made a concert great, especially if you’re trying to trigger pangs of regret in a friend who foolishly passed up an opportunity to attend. You can praise the vocalist’s operatic highs, recount the way three guitarists intricately tangled their notes, attempt to put into words a…
A Midwinter’s White Dream
By the time actor Al Kirk moved from New York back home to Cleveland 10 years ago, he had played a sharp-dressed gangster in the original Shaft, starred in Fences at Karamu House, and performed alongside Sammy Davis Jr. on Broadway. So it never occurred to him that he wouldn’t be able to get an…
Band Aids
The supergroup is one of rock and roll’s best innovations. Taking established talents and combining them with other, acknowledged stars is a no-brainer. Such a practice should be money in the bank, the kind of sure thing that keeps careers rolling and transforms the sycophantic blurbs of press kits from puff pieces into astute reporting.…
Groupie Mentality
Girlfriend, it’s time to rethink your lifestyle. Admit it: You’ve always wanted a job that entails nowhere to be and no exact time to be there. Yes, it’s time to become a groupie. To help get you started, we’ve compiled these helpful hints from leaders in the field, who’ve followed their favorite bands around for…
Out With a Bang
When the clock struck midnight at the Beachland Ballroom, a new year began as a career ended. Beachland co-owner Mark Leddy led a countdown to 2003, then the New Bomb Turks tore through their final numbers as a band, closing their farewell show with the chestnut “Crying in the Beer of a Drunk Man.” Through…
How People Shouldn’t Be Treated
The folks who run MetroHealth Medical Center do a lot of things well. The hospital’s burn unit, neonatal-care department, and trauma center rank among the best in the field. A little more than a decade ago, Metro received the Foster G. McGaw Prize, a national honor given for extraordinary commitment to community service. As its…
Pleading Guilty
Year-end top 10 lists are like Wonderbras: They make folks look better by disguising reality a bit. The albums any critic deems the best of the year aren’t always the records he listened to the most. I’ll admit it: In 2002, I listened to Bongzilla as much as Beck. So why did the latter top…
