Penis Envy
In 1982, Robert Mapplethorpe wanted to photograph sculptor Louise Bourgeois. She was uneasy. He took pictures of nude men with big penises and rock-hard hindquarters; she was a 70-year-old mother and widow. So Bourgeois brought to his studio her latex sculpture of a two-foot erect phallus. “Fillette” (1968) was the ideal icebreaker: The meeting resulted…
Fun With Fusion
For a place where a guy can get his heinie spanked by roving bands of pie-eyed bachelorettes, Fusion, a trendy tapas bar in the Warehouse District, features food that’s a hell of a lot better than it needs to be. This is by no means a complaint. But with Fusion’s dim, moody ambiance, its skin-baring…
Hurts So Good
On the one hand, Dashboard Confessional is awful, awful, awful. Wobbly warbling for the wayward — the wusses, the weenies, the whiners, the wishy-washy. Some way-past-teenaged dude up there with an acoustic guitar, howling about the girl who dumped him in junior high, while real-life junior high girls shriek along. Bah! Chris Carrabba wouldn’t have…
Rhyming on Instinct
In hip-hop, clothing lines are as part of the culture as plea bargains and probation officers. Puff Daddy has Sean Jean. Jay-Z has Rocawear. Snoop Dogg has K-Nine clothing. Hell, for some unexplained reason — certainly not popular demand — even Sisqo has his own Dragon Collection. But for all the big names and bigger…
2002 Scene Music Awards Showcase
Every band is a local band somewhere. The members of Creed may be wallpapering their mansions with Benjamin Franklins nowadays, but they’re only five years removed from working the dives of their hometown of Tallahassee, Florida, just as Trent Reznor put his time in at the Phantasy and the Euclid Tavern in Cleveland years earlier.…
Big Game Hunters
Two years ago, Robert Walsh Jr. wheeled a piece of black luggage through Concourse C at Hopkins and boarded a Continental flight bound for Los Angeles. The Cleveland-to-L.A. trek was routine for Walsh. He maintained a home in the San Fernando Valley and a condominium in Lakewood. Walsh returned from Southern California a few days…
Classic Metal Fest
Who knows why speed metal’s gene pool has all but dried up since the genre’s mid-’80s heyday. Maybe it’s because the hermetic, painted-on jeans worn by most thrashers of that era were so damn tight that reproductive capabilities were forever limited as a result. Whatever the case, there can be no denying that quality, no-holds-barred…
Rent-A-Judge
Judge Richard Markus recalls the exact moment he lost his audience, made up of members of the Ottawa County Bar Association. It happened when he mentioned private judging. Faces went blank as cluelessness seized the room. “They didn’t have any idea what I was talking about,” Markus says, chuckling. “And they were all sober, which…
Ralph Carney and Friends
Ralph Carney is the spiritual heir of Raymond Scott, Miles Davis, and Alfred Jarry. A do-it-yourself Dadaist, the Akronite has worked with everybody from Tom Waits to the B-52’s to Marc Ribot to Grant Lee Buffalo, and he seems able to play anything that’s set before him. Search out his wacky albums, Ralph Sounds and…
Curb Appeal
When they were younger, the 12 members of the Traditionals Lowrider Car Club tried to talk tough and look bad. Perhaps they lifted weights or walked with an outlaw swagger. But they were teenagers then. Now that they’re at least in their early 20s, they want to improve the world for the next generation, not…
Ming+FS
Most jungle DJs have played around with the notion of mixing hip-hop and jungle records together. Although the tempos of albums from both genres can be synchronized, the beats will not match up perfectly, due to the different rhythmic cadences that producers in each genre routinely employ. The resulting combination is fantastic, an impenetrable rhythmic…
Triple-X at Tri-C
The Internet became a porn playground precisely because of its promise of confidentiality. Gone was the shame of sweating in line at the video store, trying to conceal Pam and Tommy Lee: Hardcore and Uncensored behind a never-to-be-watched copy of The Wedding Planner. It meant porn on demand — without embarrassing human contact. Unfortunately for…
Blondie
“I wish I had invented sex,” remarked Deborah Harry in an interview during Blondie’s prime — a quip she apparently regretted, as it kept coming back to flop in the face of these New York ironists like a stray peroxide lock. The thing is, no matter how much the band tried to control its image…
Ignorance Is the Word
The Free Times’ boss is bright, funny, and a sharp dresser: What a joke! As a former co-worker of Matt Fabyan’s at the Scene for three years in the 1980s, I must say that when I read your article that actually speaks ill of him [“Meltdown at the Free Times,” June 12], I laughed out…
Various Artists
At just under an hour, The Osbourne Family Album manages to pay tribute to Ozzy while giving a boost to Jack and Kelly Osbourne’s burgeoning music-biz gigs (dour Dillusion, whom talent-scout Jack’s been developing for Epic, appears here for that reason alone, and Kelly previews her forthcoming debut with a rote run-through of Madonna’s “Papa…
From Brooklyn With Love
“Slava will tell you his role,” says a Russian American Kids Circus spokesperson. “Let him talk for himself.” You’d think there’s a Cold War going on, the way the children’s circus withholds information on its performers. We received no background on 18-year-old Slava Bokhman. He tells us he was treated like a celebrity after a…
The Pixies
One of the less constructive myths to come from our recent Age of Self-Esteem is that anyone anywhere can be a genius, given the appropriate care and feeding of his or her tender muse. Bullshit: As Pixies proves, genius is born like Athena, fully grown from the head of Zeus, or in this case, Black…
Pizza Glut
Tasty and inexpensive, pizza has made dinner as easy and economical as picking up the phone. “I know pizza’s Italian, but America’s got to take ownership of it,” says “Crazy” Mike Lynch, owner of Ermanno’s Three Guys Pizza, located in Louisville, outside of Canton. “It’s good. It’s cheap. And for years, they’ve delivered. It’s really…
Glassjaw
Glassjaw possesses all the hallmarks of fellow Long Island post-hardcore/emo outfits like Silent Majority, the Movielife, and Errortype: 11: speedy punk tempos, a cocksure singer, and tangy guitar hooks that are like Coney Island confections (we know they’re probably bad for us, but damn, are they irresistible!). Glassjaw’s Ross Robinson-produced debut, Everything You Ever Wanted…
Graphic, Novel
Joe Versus the Volcano ran on cable last week, and contained within that misguided, unmemorable film was a small scene that only now resonates. Tom Hanks, who believes he has not long to live, emerges from a doctor’s office wearing a fedora too small for his head and a trench coat that hangs off his…
Snack-n-Cakes
In the pantheon of guilty pleasures, Snack-n-Cakes’ debut is right up there with late-night Cinemax and passing gas in the bathtub. This band is a lot like the junk food from which it takes its name: infectious, candied-to-the-core, and prone to go from savory to stomach-turning quickly. Taste the Difference starts out as a sticky…
Crocodile Schlock
If the BBC’s esteemed David Attenborough is the Kurt Loder of nature documentaries, then “Crocodile Hunter” Steve Irwin must be Johnny Knoxville. Frequently eschewing tranquilizer darts or any other safety equipment, the man apparently prefers to wrestle large reptiles with abandon and twirl poisonous snakes around by the tail as they flail around trying to…
Jazzanova
When you think of jazz and hip-hop music, Germany probably isn’t the first country to jump out. Yet the Deutsch production collective known as Jazzanova infuses both genres, along with a heaping spoonful of house, Latin and African rhythms, and Philly soul. Best known for its slew of glistening remixes for diverse artists such as…
Dragon Ballsy
For centuries, Western philosophies have regarded the dragon as a symbol of explosive violence, and frankly, that’s rather one-sided. By (Saint) George, there has existed a notion that the basilisk is always bad, born to be slain. However, there’s a wide spectrum between Sirrush and Smaug, representing everything from our highest wisdom to our basest…
Fight Club
A pal asked last week, “Who you writing about?” Told him, “Art Linson,” which screwed his face into a big ol’ question mark. “He’s a movie producer. He made Heat, Fight Club, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, The Untouchables, Car Wash…” Said said friend upon hearing that last one, “Dude must be old, if he…
