Republican-Based Art
Clevelanders first became familiar with artist Derek Hess' distinctive visual vocabulary when he deployed his sinewy, struggling figures and unsettling angels and cherubs to illustrate the music of the dark, threatening bands he promoted at the old Euclid Tavern. As he evolved from flyers to concert posters to fine-art drawings, he used similar visual language…
Stellar Madness
TOP PICK Robot Chicken: Star Wars(Warner/Adult Swim)The stop-motion animation show's terrific spoof of the Star Wars universe finally arrives on DVD. Skits involve everybody from a smack-talking Boba Fett to Cantina casualty Ponda Baba. Even George Lucas gets in on the action. Best: a yo'-momma fight between Luke and the Emperor ("Your mother is so…
T-Bone Stakes
The Figure-8 Camper Pulls in Painesville do more than glorify short-track racing; they allow competitors some creativity in how to dispose of their hunks of junk. “Some of the more interesting cars have been new Volvos, BMWs, and Monte Carlos. But we’ve seen people use old boats, shot-to-hell campers, and other crapper cars,” says Jason…
Capsule reviews of current area art exhibitions
Summer Painting Exhibition — According to gallerist William Busta, 70 percent of the art in this show was made within five weeks of the opening. More impressive than the spanking newness is the fact that 100 percent of the work represents a divergent direction on the part of its creator. Matthew Kolodziej displays four gouache…
Hello Again
Moving into someone's old desk, as several of us have done here at the new Scene, always has a voyeuristic quality. You go through the drawers and see what scraps the person before you left behind. You see their books and the remnants of their files. When you set up the phone, there's the weird…
New World Man
Ever since he bowed out of groundbreaking prog-rockers Genesis back in 1975, Peter Gabriel has made his name as a proud foster parent of world music, combining the rock and soul of his roots with a more global approach. He's taken that image quite seriously, and on Big Blue Ball he's gone all out. Over…
Beauty of the Beasts
The wilderness goes wild tonight as families commune with nocturnal creatures at the fourth annual Nature at Night in Willoughby Hills. Spectators will get to meet reclusive residents like a great horned owl, black rat snake, tree frog, and opossum. “Many of our common animals are only active at night,” says Barb Burko, a naturalist…
John Mayer
On his new CD/DVD package Where the Light Is: John Mayer Live in Los Angeles, the guitar-slingin’ party boy shows off the different corners of his career. There’s an acoustic set, a performance by the bluesy John Mayer Trio, and a rock show with his full-time band playing hits like “Waiting on the World to…
Arts News
Chances are you haven't had your art or writing dissected by peers, right there in front of you, since school. Chances are you haven't had much guidance in promoting your work since then either. Next week the print cooperative Zygote Press, in collaboration with the Morgan Paper Conservatory, kicks off an almost-monthly series of get-togethers…
Payrolls And Politics
Officially, The Plain Dealer reports the news. Unofficially, publisher Terry Egger supplies the muscle for a mighty journalistic machine, able to influence policy in the Greater Cleveland area (or at least pretend to). By nearly all accounts, the source of that influence is his vast network of connected staffers. Regina Brett, ColumnistMost recent previous job:…
Splish Splash Bash
At first, Lorie Strittmatter thought it was a lame idea to couple the American Power Boat Association’s regatta with this weekend’s roster of country, folk, and southern-blues bands, which takes place on Springfield Lake in the southern Summit County burg of Lakemore. But the more she talked it over with lake enthusiasts, the better the…
Suffocation
To the outsider, Suffocation can sound like a run-of-the-mill death-metal group. But the Long Island quintet ranks among the most influential bands in the history of the genre — starting with its 1991 EP Human Waste and running through mid-’90s albums like Pierced From Within. Many other groups earned their stripes copying Suffocation’s rule book,…
Media And Message
Early in the last half-century, when what now looks like a trickle of media seemed like a torrent, communications theorist Marshall McLuhan noticed that the way we had begun to communicate with TV, radio and recorded music had become a form of content in itself. He presented the idea to the world in his 1964…
Accidental Songwriter
You might assume a musician who's been making music for well over a decade would have the process of creating a song down to a science. But Tim Kinsella, the mastermind behind the prolific Chicago group Joan of Arc, claims he still doesn't have a clue what he's doing. "I really don't know how to…
Revel With a Cause
Haute cuisine and furry friends are paired with fine vintages from around the world at this weekend’s Hudson Wine Festival. The Cabernet-to-Chardonnay tribute, with a menu of grilled tuna, Italian panini, and Kobe beef hot dogs, also benefits the Humane Society of Greater Akron. “It’s an upscale-casual atmosphere we like to call jeans-and-blazer dining,” says…
Full Blown Chaos and Shai Hulud
When the metalcore bubble finally bursts, Full Blown Chaos and Shai Hulud will surely be among the survivors. Both bands have kept it extra real by refusing to add melodic vocals or other commercial tricks that threaten to make the genre passé by next Tuesday. Hailing from Queens, New York, Full Blown Chaos plays music…
All Go World
For Chuck Karnack, Marshall McLuhan's observations about media and message could be twisted in a grittier, more primitive way. For the mastermind behind All Go Signs, the medium is the city, and the city is the message. Karnack – who for this year's Ingenuity Festival is coordinating programming slated for the alley linking Prospect to…
The Geek Squad
"We went from Goth to geek," Timothy Smith repeats several times in the course of a phone conversation. Clearly, he's amused by the musical trajectory that he and his bandmate Pete Naegele (aka DJ Hojo) have taken. Both spent time in popular Cleveland-based '90s goth band Lestat, with their tenures briefly overlapping in the early…
Burger King
The debate about the burger’s birthplace still sizzles more than 100 years later. But fast-food aficionados at this weekend’s National Hamburger Festival in Akron all agree that the popular American sandwich was born when an enterprising foodie, for on-the-go customers, put grilled ground beef between two slices of bread. To carnivores, the fest is a…
Amos Lee
It’s easy to dismiss Philadelphia-based troubadour Amos Lee as Norah Jones with testicles. But that does a tremendous disservice to the guy’s minimalist, John Prine-like approach to songwriting. Nowhere near as gentrified as Jones, Lee’s only real musical connection to Jones — whom he opened for in 2004 — is a shared record label. His…
Cleveland Needs Plain Relief
The newly merged Scene and Free Times should continue to expose our local Democratic and Republican party duopoly politicians who are selling out to the legalized bribery of their funders, wealthy big business and, it is said, some labor unions. It is organized crime, but they are our corrupt government and will not put each…
Merger Was The Case That They Gave Me
In 1970, a fluffy weekly called Cleveland After Dark folded after just a few months. Even then, small papers faced longer odds for survival than restaurants, and the demise of yet another local rag would be wholly unnoteworthy but for what came next. Richard Kabat, who was running a promotions business at the time, saw…
Punk-Rock Road Show Brings Back the Rock. And the Rap. And the Ska. And…
For 14 years, the Vans Warped Tour has been a punk-rock’s Who’s Who. But this year’s edition digs back to its roots, assembling the most diverse lineup since the turn of the millennium. “I’m exposing kids to a wide variety of music,” says founder Kevin Lyman. “I don’t think there’s a scene in music right…
Caribbean Cruisin’
Downtown Cleveland morphs into an island fiesta of spicy treats, salsa beats, and pageant queens for this weekend’s Puerto Rican Parade & Latino Fest. And organizer Daisy Diaz of the Julia de Burgos Cultural Arts Center insists you don’t have to come from south of the border to get your cucaracha on. “It’s all about…
Jeremy Jay and Film School
Jeremy Jay has been called the American Jens Lekman. And like the Swedish indie-rocker, Jay makes gorgeous dream pop. His new CD, A Place Where We Could Go, is so sparse, it could have been recorded in a cave. But Jay uncovers hidden patches of beauty in the untamed forest of mass-produced music. It’s made…
On His Blindness
My doctor sat back, his ophthalmoscope blinking off as the room lights came up. "You've got a little cataract developing in your right eye." He was smiling a little too broadly, even for a doctor with an office in Beachwood, and it seemed like he said, "cute little cataract." I wasn't pleased. My mother had…
Two Different Animals
Bands and label troubles sometimes seem to go hand in hand. Rock history is littered with those has-beens, never-weres and shoulda-coulda-wouldas that can lay some or all of the blame at the doorstep of one record label or another. Indianapolis' Margot & the Nuclear So and So's (the unwieldy handle comes courtesy of the band's…
Why Branson Wright Got Demoted, And More
Cleveland, you may have heard, is not the greenest city in the world. Ours is a city where a hybrid is a Polish-sausage pierogi and a car pool is something confined to the world of Dagwood. So perhaps it should come as no surprise that here, a bicycle is treated like an alien vehicle. Feeling…
Ball of Yarns
Finger puppets and fairy-tale readings aren’t enough for Becky Davis to entertain her young charges. So three years ago, the Akron librarian stormed into her boss’ office with a wacky idea to pool together the most revered yarn-spinners in Northeast Ohio for the first-ever Akron Storytelling Festival. “I just felt that storytelling got kids ready…
Monotonix
Who could’ve predicted that the best live band on the planet right now would be a raw garage-punk trio from Israel, fronted by a deranged 42-year-old former tank commander who looks like the late magician Doug Henning and howls like British Steel-era Rob Halford? If Monotonix and their hirsute singer Ami Shalev simply stood onstage…
A Lost Crusade
In all the bloodstained and ghastly rampages of messianic religion, you've got to say this for the Catholics: Eventually, they feel terrible about their crimes – even if it takes several centuries (finally exonerating Galileo, for example). I can't imagine most Protestants and Muslims doing that (sorry), especially the current holy-roller breed. In the transfixing…
Ringworm
Ringworm, if you're new to the scene and feel like getting a bruise or two this weekend, is the city's reigning king of metallic hardcore. Frontman the Human Furnace — the story behind his nickname is one of Cleveland's best-kept secrets — describes the band's latest Victory Records release, The Venomous Grand Design, as "Kreator,…
A Portable Guitar Hero Tops The Pop Culture Picks
TOP PICK — Guitar Hero: On Tour (Activision) This video game for the Nintendo DS makes it easy for us to get our Slash on practically anywhere. Like the original Guitar Hero, the portable version is all about hitting the right notes and rocking out. Bonus points for the cool guitar-pick stylus. Besides, it sure…
No Fuelin’
Just in time for on-the-road summer vacations, comic Dave Landau cracks a few price-of-gas jokes during his tour stop this weekend in Cuyahoga Falls. He was recently watching the news and heard a dude say that a gallon of unleaded gas was still cheaper than, say, a gallon of OJ. “That’s flawless logic, except for…
Patti Smith and Kevin Shields
My Bloody Valentine mastermind Kevin Shields and punk priestess Patti Smith undress for their collaborative CD, The Coral Sea. Shields breaks free from his studio fixations, which typically find him laboring over things like the color of microphone filters; Smith bares her soul like she’s never done before. Culled from two live performances in London…
Arrested Development
Nancy (Mary Steenburgen) and Robert (Richard Jenkins) are two single parents who quickly consummate their relationship in a sleazy hotel room after locking eyes at a conference. They don't know a thing about each other before getting it on, but as they're undressing, they confess they're currently supporting their loser sons, who, though close to…
Rise Up
After months of haggling, state legislators last week appointed and funded a nine-member panel to study Cuyahoga County government and recommend reforms. Final proposals are due by November 7 and would be subject to a vote by county residents. Given the nature of county politics — entrenched personalities, cozy dealings between businesses and politicos, offices…
Letters published July 16, 2008
The Scene-Free Times merger Gadfly Paper Sticking it to politicos, our specialty: I am a lover of all things Cleveland. Although I’ve moved around a bit in life (parent’s work, college, job), I consider Cleveland home. I’m not going to pretend to know the newspaper business. However, I suspect the main reason for the Scene/Free…
Dirt Devils
Big air and even bigger tricks rule North Coast Harbor this weekend, when the AST Dew Tour spins into town for the Right Guard Open. BMXers, motocrossers, and skateboarders alike will compete in the second of five national stops on the tour, with Youngstown-area native Anthony Napolitan gunning for his second career Dew Cup on…
Cyndia Lauper
On her first album of original material in a dozen years, Lauper pulls a Madonna, renovating her image from 1980s MTV icon into modern dance-floor diva. Bring Ya to the Brink doesn’t transcend the genre the way Ray of Light does, but it is Lauper’s best and most consistent album since her 1983 debut. And…
Confucius Say Hollywood Suck
Hollywood Chinese: I go into documentaries like Hollywood Chinese with a little trepidation. Another dissertation on a minority dissed by the screen industry? And from Arthur Dong, director of the gay-persecution documentaries Coming Out Under Fire and Licensed to Kill? Sounds like a dreary gripefest, and the fact is, American film has always been an…
No matter what you call them, !!! makes some of the decade’s best dance music
Confusion swarms around !!! like bees surround a honey-filled hive. Naming your band with three punctuation marks — rather than with, you know, actual words — will do that. Of course, this sorta thing has been done before. Look at Prince: He still can’t decide whether he wants to be called by his royal moniker…
Rich Man, dead Man
The Bachelorette and Survivor meet CSI and Sweeney Todd for tonight’s dinner-theater production of Who Wants to Murder a Millionaire? by the Toledo-based Random Acts troupe. With a cast of both professional actors and audience members, Millionaire features 12 women trying to win the affection of a tycoon named Darrin. And playwright Lynda Whiting promises…
Sigur Ros
Everything is relative when you’re talking about epic Icelandic space rock. But something very strange happens in the 49th minute of Sigur Rós’ fifth album, Med Sud í Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust. After nearly a decade of relating joy, anguish, and various other emotions in a customized tongue that may as well be Neptunian, singer…
Old School Approach
Welcome to New York City circa 1994, back when selling pot on the streets was as easy as vending ice cream and the Notorious B.I.G. was going to change the world. Jonathan Levine's semiautobiographical flick takes you into the life of Luke (Josh Peck), a recent high-school graduate spending a sweltering summer dealing drugs in…
Twist of Fate
During a 1960 appearance on American Bandstand, Chubby Checker revolutionized pop culture in less than three minutes as he introduced “The Twist” to viewers. His signature song will lead a set list of hits tonight, when Checker plays the Rock Hall to promote the drop of his latest two-CD package, All the Best, which includes…
Wonderlong
While some look back on childhood as a carefree time when jobs, taxes, and cellulite were meaningless terms, there are sufficient horrors in anyone’s formative years to fuel a year’s worth of plays. And that may explain why many artists are drawn to Lewis Carroll’s fanciful but deeply curious writing — including Matthew Earnest, who…
Bonnie Prince Billy
When Will Oldham began making records in the ’90s, using various Palace monikers, he was a distant soul. His voice sounded desperate, like he was reaching out from a cold, stark place, with little more than his guitar as a companion. He’s advanced a bit since then. On his latest album, Lie Down in the…
Your Permanent Record
The announcement of my high-school reunion made me think of my permanent record, something I hadn't considered in years. There were only three terrifying concerns when I was attending Shaker High. The first was getting a condom. Not that I needed one. The closest I had come to kissing a girl was in a wet…
Hanging Chad
Here’s a twist on a judge doling out punishment for Chad Zumock’s moment of bad judgment: Instead of throwing Kent comic Chad Zumock in the clink for a DUI, Hizzoner is making him host Chad’s Community Service Show to benefit Big Brothers & Sisters of Portage County. To satisfy the judge’s orders, the comedy vet…
How a Black Catholic From Glenville Came to Rule the Jewish Party Scene
By the time Ryan Cira’s bar mitzvah finally arrived last month, 13-year-old Autumn Caress figured she’d been to “25 — maybe 30 bar mitzvahs” this year alone. That’s nothing compared to Ally Levy, another 13-year-old, who’s been to “like 50 of them.” Or Elana Grugman, who’s been “to a hundred! At least!” That’s life for…
The Ting Tings
“You gotta love the BPM,” sings Katie White, one half of the bubbly British duo the Ting Tings, on the lead track of their debut album. And for the next 37 minutes, guitarist White and drummer Jules De Martino pile on beats and chewy pop hooks in a super-perky mix of indie-pop jaggedness, dance-floor rave-ups,…
Supergrass
Necessity may well be the mother of invention, but complacency is the mother of reinvention. With over a dozen years and five albums under essentially the same lineup, Supergrass readily understands the concept of guarding against becoming too comfortable with the creative process. The story of the sixth and latest Supergrass record, the stellar Diamond…
Poppin’ Fresh
The Cherry Poppin’ Daddies finally have a treasure box of new originals to call their own, following up their last album, which came out eight years ago. To pimp the CD, Susquehanna, the two-decade-old octet hauls its horns and strings to Peabody’s for a Cleveland concert tonight. “It’s a reflection of what we’ve always done,”…
Evangelism Rocks
Cleveland is a city that abounds in strange contradictions. For instance, how come Playhouse Square has totally overlooked Altar Boyz as a candidate to occupy its 14th Street Theatre – when it's potentially the most profitable moneymaking enterprise since Tony kept relentlessly marrying Tina for fun and lucre – and left it up to Beck…
Get Out – Weekly Events
THURSDAY 7.24 Thursday Night Live Brad Sandiford has been on a nine-month mission to turn Club E into Cleveland's version of Harlem's historic Apollo Theatre. His Thursday Night Live comedy spot for black performers features Columbus' Cortney Gee as host. "When we first opened up last fall, we went through all the bumps and bruises…
Valley of the Trolls
Take it from Oberlin psychic Sonya Horstman: Sundown is the best time to grab your camera and snap a shot of a haunted spirit on tonight’s Cuyahoga Valley Urban Legends Tour. Even her bus driver was spooked by an apparition as he chauffeured 30 ghostbusters through the 33,000-acre Cuyahoga Valley National Park last year. “He…
Bummer Summer
We’ve all been in a home, including our own, when we hear noises that appear to have no source and no explanation. But few of us have heard a disembodied laugh track, as the bizarre characters do in Betty’s Summer Vacation. And it’s those cacklers that tie this dark comedy together at the Bang and…
Shawn Charles
Cleveland beatmaker Shawn Charles takes center stage on his solo debut. Well, sort of. The I.V. League Entertainment producer still backs a bunch of rappers on Full Scholarship. But instead of guesting on other people’s albums, this time they’re featured on his. Rime Royal’s Furious and Speed drop some stellar verses over a minimal but…
Really Big Show
On Saturday, July 26, Wish You Were Here, the Cleveland-based Pink Floyd tribute band, will perform a three-hour set that includes the classic double-album The Wall in its entirety, with a scale recreation of Floyd's legendary, elaborate stage production. "It truly is one of the greatest concept albums of all time," says frontman-bassist Eroc Sosinksi.…
Salvation Army
A quintessential boy-band quintet from small-town Ohio graces the stage for tonight’s opening of Altar Boyz in Lakewood. The parody of the teen-pop music biz, with book by Kevin Del Aguila, and tallied a boatload of Drama Desk Award nominations after its off-Broadway debut four years ago. A hulking DX12 Soul Sensor machine keeps track…
America’s best rock band returns with more tales of drunk and horny kids
On a comfortably cool night in December 2006, the Hold Steady climbed on the Grog Shop’s stage a little before midnight. “Where were you the first 4,000 times I played your city?” asked visibly sloshed frontman Craig Finn. The N.Y.C.-by-way-of-Minneapolis band had indeed played Cleveland before. But following the release of its terrific third album,…
Tortes And All
Restaurants, like people, often seduce us with encouraging first impressions. Eager for a long and happy relationship, we don rose-colored glasses and overlook the blemishes. Inevitably, the more time we spend with the restaurant, the quicker this romance period evaporates, until all we see is the negative. Time spent away can help the diner gain…
The Hold Steady: Beachland Ballroom, Thursday, July 17
"I usually use this part of the song to talk about baseball, but I bet you don't want to talk about baseball this year," jabbed Hold Steady lead singer Craig Finn during the band's rendition of "Your Little Hoodrat Friend," to which the raucous and dedicated sold-out crowd loudly booed. Finn, the affable and often…
Koochie-Koo Haiku
With 12 pages of original poems and vivid illustrations, Betsy Snyder’s Haiku Baby is a preschooler’s must-read for the summer. And you can give props to the 1994 Nordonia High School grad for putting the concepts of rain, sun, and flower into easy-to-grasp language, like the “tickly-toe grass” where buttercups grow and the “splish-splash, puddle…
Capsule reviews of current area theater presentations
Alice . . . — In Matthew Earnest’s adaptation-with-music of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, this inspired director has pared the ridiculous and illogical events that Alice experiences down to their basics. Using a stark and monochromatic white set as a backdrop, Earnest puts an imaginative and largely excellent cast through their…
Relient K
Canton’s Christian-pop-punks Relient K have been making records for 10 years. For their sixth album, they gather a bunch of their leftovers, B-sides, and rarities, and add some new tunes to the mix. Most of the new songs take the band beyond its usual crunchy guitar pop. “The Last, the Lost, the Least” is an…
