White’s Squall
Nashville-based singer-songwriter Jason White — who led Cleveland power-poppers the Janglers in the late ’80s and early ’90s — was all set to release his first solo album in 1998 when his record company cleaned house and forgot about him. When he finally got around to recording some new songs in 2001, the CD, Shades…
On Stage
A Streetcar Named Desire — The credentials of this Pulitzer-winning show are legendary, and everyone deserves to see it in live performance. Of course, hovering over any staging of Streetcar is the blimp-like presence of the late Marlon Brando, who forged Stanley Kowalski’s petulant man-child persona on Broadway and in film more than 50 years…
Thievery Corporation
You can tell that the Thievery Corporation has a colorful musical palette by listening to its original compositions. But this new mix collection shows just how far the duo’s tastes go. The album features three previously released tracks by the group itself, as well as selections by such recognizable names as Thunderball and Karminsky; other…
Somber Party
7/16-7/18 If organizers were stumped on which bands to book for the Puerto Rican Cultural Festival & Parade, they knew the late Roberto Ocasio’s jazz orchestra would come to the rescue. After Ocasio died in a January car crash, the festival’s committee decided to make this year’s fiesta an homage to the local bandleader. Invitations…
Blue Notes
If you doubt that every cloud has a silver lining, consider the tale of young Andy Himmel, would-be restaurateur. He was right in the middle of transforming an old East Side pizzeria into a snazzy little restaurant and jazz club last year when heavy spring rains and construction mishaps brought the building down around his…
Kool Keith and Kutmasta Kurt
The reunion of Kool Keith and Kutmasta Kurt is one of those musical what-took-them-so-long? moments: There are few producers who know how to handle Keith’s stream of unconsciousness better than his fellow Funky Redneck. Since their last pairing on 2000’s Masters of Illusion, Keith’s work has often featured beats that tried to match his surrealism,…
Playing Dirty
SAT 7/17 The dirtier, the better. That’s how Scott Baltusnik measures the success of the annual Grass & Mud Volleyball Tournament. Near the DJ, food, and beer booths, more than 50 teams follow official U.S.A. Volleyball rules on 20 grass courts. But farther back, at least 150 other teams get down and dirty in 40…
On View
Capturing Cleveland: Pages From a City Sketchbook — The 200-plus works in various media by 21 Cleveland Institute of Art students all portray Cleveland scenery. Although their subjects are easily recognizable, providing opportunities to reminisce, most of the works are mere surface studies, lacking tangible mood and depth. Among the exceptions are Sarah Laing’s digital…
Amp Fiddler
Detroit musician Amp Fiddler’s Waltz of a Ghetto Fly sounds like an homage to Sly and the Family Stone’s There’s a Riot Goin’ On without the drowsy, cocaine-induced lows, or D’Angelo’s Voodoo without the love-affair-as-blood-soaked-ritual motif. In other words, it’s all about impassioned extemporizing, R&B as an end unto itself, and achieving ecstasy through long…
Trail Mix
WED 7/21 Patience Cameron Hoskins has worn out a lot of shoes on local streets and trails over the years. And she keeps finding new places to trek. In the fourth edition of Cleveland on Foot: 50 Walks and Hikes in Greater Cleveland, Hoskins details strolling routes in urban, suburban, rural, and woodland areas. “We…
Brand Who?
Anonymity doesn’t come easy for a dude with Technicolor forearms. But despite the many tattoos that checker the thin frame of Myk Porter — they distinguish the Brandtson frontman at 30 paces, before you can even make out his features — he and his bandmates have grown accustomed to going largely unrecognized in their hometown.…
Los Lobos
East L.A.’s greatest band has spent the 21st century backing away from the formal and textural experimentation that marked its work in the 1990s. In 2002, Good Morning Aztlán winningly showcased the band’s roots — hard, Latin-keyed rock and soul with plenty of swing — but felt a little dry for lack of interplanetary keyboard…
The Media’s Liberal?
It’s not easy to rile a man who trades in the bare-knuckle arts of labor and politics. But ask John Ryan about the “liberal media,” and his genial veneer begins to splinter. “I either laugh or cry every time I hear this stereotype,” he says. “It’s certainly not true in Cleveland.” Think of Ryan as…
Beyond the Blues
The jazz-blues club 2527 is the kind of place that would feel completely unrealistic in a sitcom. At the small candlelit bar on the border of Tremont and Ohio City, everybody knows everybody else, and patrons wave at new arrivals from the other side of the room, greeting them by name. The Mary Bridget Davies…
J Scott Franklin
Earlier this year, J Scott Franklin was laid off from his day job as a Cleveland schoolteacher. The poet and songwriter has since sold all his belongings and moved into his car for a 96-day tour of America. Franklin’s debut explains the wanderlust. “It is my belief that the things we daydream are the things…
When Weather Erupts . . .
Channel 5 weatherman Mike Stone has a tough job. When his Quadruple Doppler XL 3000 Mark 4 catches a tornado heading for Northeast Ohio, he must break into regular programming to warn viewers. Sometimes it’s during Matlock. Sometimes it’s during programming of grave national import, such as Game 4 of the Lakers-Pistons series last month.…
Lone Star
The cowboy hat may be D:Fuse’s trademark, but his music hardly evokes Texas. The DJ’s creations are more likely to call to mind New York, San Francisco, London, and Ibiza, as well as visions of ecstatic throngs sweating to a seamless mix of brisk beats per minute. In one of the many ironies found in…
Henry James
In case you haven’t been paying attention, singer-songwriters on punk labels 1) are not uncommon, and 2) should automatically give the discriminating music fan 10 things to wince about — none of which warrants mention here; Cleveland’s Henry James is the exception to the rule. The 19-year-old wunderkind has followed the Dashboard Confessional route, progressing…
Bring It On
Krystal Nameth really, really wants to be a Cavalier Girl. She bounces on her toes and desperately tries to appear taller than her usual 5 foot 2. The 18-year-old with the ironed-straight hair and almond-shaped eyes studies her competition. She’s feeling confident: None of them went to as many pre-audition workshops as she did. None…
No Alternative
A decade ago, Morrissey sang about how we hate it when our friends become successful. These days, Moz must really be pissed at all the fame his alt-rock brethren experienced back then, ’cause it pretty much spelled an end to the genre that made him a star. In the early ’90s, alternative rock exploded thanks…
Rover Unleashed!
“Give it to me, Bubba! Harder! Yeah! Give it to me!” Rover, the morning-show host for WXTM-FM 92.3 Xtreme Radio, is on all fours, his neck wrapped in a leather collar connected to a leash. Spittle flies from his mouth, and veins bulge in his forehead. Moments ago, he was an affable guy, quick to…
Amps Get Cranked
Local ragers Amps II Eleven have signed with Smog Veil Records, the Nevada-based wellspring for Cleveland underground music. “They’re the Ric Flair of Cle-rock,” Smog Veil owner Frank Mauceri says of the band, which formed in late 2002 with members of Cleveland’s Stepsister, Southern Trespass, and Shuteye. “The fans said ‘Bring it,’ and the band…
Good Will Bunting
7/16-8/22 A double-header will play out downtown over the next month, but don’t look to Jacobs Field for the action. The Great Lakes Theater Festival’s summer repertory features one company of 18 actors performing two plays — The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) and the Bard’s The Taming of the Shrew — that alternate…
The Modern Troubadours
This is the true story of four strangers, picked to travel and share a stage at venues across the eastern end of the United States, to find out what happens when “emerging” singer-songwriters are thrown together, stop being polite, and start getting real. Welcome to The Real World — Modern Troubadours. Bereft of any formal…
Sacrificing Isaac
If you’re wondering how Hollywood could possibly adapt Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot, a collection of similarly themed short stories bound together by the slenderest of common threads, the answer is that it didn’t. The credits for I, Robot read “suggested by Isaac Asimov’s book,” but the canny sci-fi fan will notice several other “suggestions” from…
Brotherhood of Groove
If the seats are cleared as the Brotherhood of Groove starts playing, things are going as planned. Those who rise from their chairs are headed for available floor space to mix it up with the band’s infectious rhythms. For those who remain seated, there’s a payoff as well: The funk that anchors the New Orleans…
Until the Night
“Memory is a wonderful thing, if you don’t have to deal with the past,” declares French Céline (Julie Delpy) to her erstwhile American one-night-stand Jesse (Ethan Hawke) in Before Sunset, the meandering but reasonably charming follow-up to the duo’s 1995 Euromance, Before Sunrise. In the movies as in life, nearly a decade has passed, and…
New Invisible Joy
To hear New Invisible Joy guitarist Mike Gaydos tell the story, the band isn’t necessarily a big fan of vintage alt-rock — God is. “When John, our singer, was looking for a name for the band,” explains Gaydos, “he supposedly picked up a Bible, opened up to random pages, pointed his finger, and used the…
Sa-Weet!
It’s charming. It’s hilarious. It is perhaps the most beautifully crafted, lovingly rendered portrait of extreme geekitude ever to grace the screen. It’s Napoleon Dynamite — the first feature film from 24-year-old Brigham Young University student Jared Hess — and, if there is any justice, it’s going to be huge. Remember that kid who was…
The New Year
It’s impossible to talk about the New Year without dwelling on the past. The music that Bubba and Matt Kadane made as part of their beloved former band Bedhead is the metric by which every song they write now is judged — they are slammed for being too similar, slammed for being too different. “We…
Just One of Those Biopics
“Is this one of those avant-garde things?” a dying Cole Porter (Kevin Kline) warily asks Gabe (Jonathan Pryce), a sort of Ghost of Musicals Past who appears out of the ether to shepherd the composer through the this-was-your-life montage that makes up Irvin Winkler’s biopic De-Lovely. “It’s a musical — it should be entertaining,” insists…
Ming & FS
If anything irritates Fred Sargolini, half of the forward-looking hip-hop/electro duo Ming and FS, it’s artists who think they have to color inside the lines. “A lot of them don’t realize they’re doing it,” he believes. “They say they’re open-minded, but they’re really puritans. It’s like they’re doing this underground art form, but at the…
Word for Word
Word for Word Reviewer lays an egg: First, the good news: Congratulations to Christine Howey on her recent award for review and criticism at the annual Ohio Excellence in Journalism Awards dinner. And congratulations to her award-winning colleagues, with Scene writers garnering a total of 20-plus awards for the third straight year. Now for the…
Duff, Dumb, and Blonde
Nitpicking a movie aimed at young girls can come across as gratuitously cruel, but if you’re neither female nor young, you should be warned that A Cinderella Story pretty much sucks. Now then, to the little ladies: You may not be convinced by anything that’s about to be said, but it would be a dereliction…
The Roots
More than just a band, the Roots have consistently lived up to their name during a decade-long career, spreading their tendrils throughout the hip-hop community to link seemingly disparate artists. Before Kanye West became the most celebrated bridge between the music’s over- and underground, these Philadelphians, led by drummer Amir “?uestlove” Thompson, went from alt-rap…
Split Screen Squared
It’s easy to overlook the story in Pretend, filmmaker Julie Talen’s debut feature about two young sisters who scheme to keep their father from walking out on their family. With split screens, quick editing, and multiple perspectives filling its 75 minutes, Pretend is a stylistic triumph. But there’s compassion at the center of it –…
Hop on Pop
Celebrity pairings are endlessly fascinating to those of us who buy our socks off the sale table at Target. Whether we’re tracking monumental misfits like gorgeous Julia Roberts and her former, inexplicable attraction to country twanger Lyle Lovett, or we’re delightedly watching the slow-motion collision of Ben and J-Lo’s inflated egos, there’s a fascination that’s…
Starlite Desperation
Starlite Desperation’s 1998 debut, Show You What a Baby Won’t (GSL), caused a few ripples in the indie undertow, with a rough-housed Roxy Music sound and a brazenly sexy swagger rarely seen in indie rock. But more than two years later, their harder-edged follow-up, Go Kill Mice (Flapping Jet), got scant distribution. Members came and…
This Week’s Day-By-Day Picks
Thursday, July 15 What’s creepier than slithering, crawling bugs? How about slithering, crawling bugs magnified 250,000 times their normal size and projected on a super-huge screen? The Great Lakes Science Center’s Omnimax Theater’s latest movie, A Rainforest Adventure — Bugs!, is about the insects found in Borneo. It features such sights as the births of…
Scattered Storm
There is hardly a finer counterpoint to a soft summer night than the words of Shakespeare (or whoever the hell wrote those plays) — and The Tempest, now being performed free and outdoors, is a wonderful collection of such language treasures. While some of us might observe that “our lives ain’t diddly-squat, and then we…
Pigmy Love Circus
Pigmy Love Circus frontman Mike Savage sure does sing about his nuts a lot. “I’ve got 20-pound fists and balls made of steel,” he growls on the opening cut of his band’s latest. “Come around to my yard, we’ll see how they feel.” On the very next tune, Mr. Savage refers to the size of…
