Moving Pictures
The works in Into the Light: The Projected Image in American Art, 1964-1977 can hardly be said to suffer from overexposure. Although examples by well-known artists such as Andy Warhol and Bruce Nauman are included, these 16 films, videos, and installations are gathered together for the first time in this exhibition, now at the Cleveland…
Victorian Virtue
Lyric Opera’s move from the Cleveland Institute of Music to the more conducive environs of the Cleveland Play House puts it several steps up the evolutionary ladder. With the better acoustics of the Drury Theatre, audiences can savor every pungent witticism that makes up Patience, the company’s second production of the summer. Premiering in 1881,…
Sharp Shear’s
Like finding a ruby at the bottom of a Cracker Jack box, discovering Peter Shear’s in desolate downtown Canton seems too good to be true. This is, after all, a city where some of the most beautiful downtown buildings are boarded up and for sale, and where the only foot traffic on a Saturday night…
Beachwood Goes Mad
It’s been nearly a year since Napa Valley Grille sounded the retreat at Beachwood Place. And it’s been about four months since Solon’s Sapphire Grille crashed and burned. But entrepreneur Mary Ann Davis, Sapphire Grille’s former financial backer, has salvaged the best of both businesses for her newest venture, Mad 4 You. The Mediterranean-style bistro…
Adventures in Lo Fi
“The world is changing,” Diane says to Renton in a scene from the 1996 British film Trainspotting. “Music is changing, even drugs are changing. You can’t sit around all day with your heroin and listening to Ziggy Pop.” “It’s Iggy Pop,” Renton shoots back. “Whatever. The guy’s dead anyway.” That exchange stung some American rock…
Scott Free
It started as a housewarming party for Lisa Shirey, her roommate, and their new pad in Middleburg Heights. They invited about a dozen people. It was so low-key, Shirey’s grandparents even made an appearance. Then the party swelled. At one point, nearly 50 people filled the yard. An argument erupted, and two large groups faced…
Twisted Metal
Erin Carracher is visibly nervous on this Monday night, standing before a group of about 40 scruffy rockers in the Beachland Ballroom tavern. Her eyes scarcely meet the crowd; her gaze instead is fixed upon her own feet, as she paces the stage anxiously. You’d probably be uptight, too. As the new frontwoman for the…
Off Track
Adam Riedy left his family seven years ago. He moved from Lakewood to the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Lake Placid, but not because he particularly hungered for skating glory. He went for a 14-year-old’s reasons: His rivals were going, and he didn’t want to be left behind. “He was always so competitive,” says his…
A Simple Plan
It’s ironic that Bim Thomas’s house, at the end of a crooked lane in Lakewood, is numbered 2112, forever bringing to mind the Rush album of that name. As the drummer in the deconstructionist blues duo the Bassholes, Thomas, with partner Don Howland, specializes in ramshackle rural sounds totally unlike the masturbatory prog-rock that’s the…
TV on Trial
He’s described as brash, bold, and colorful by his admirers. Petulant, egotistical, or simply an asshole by others. Even now, 18 months after leaving office, ex-Judge Robert Ferreri holds a prominent place in the memory of his former colleagues at Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court. For 12 years, he was the ringmaster in a robe: part…
Tempo_2
Chances are pretty slim that you’ll see many glowsticks in action at Tempo_2. Carrying on in the tradition of several other experimental electronic events co-sponsored by the Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art and the Headroom Digital production crew over the last year, Tempo_2 will feature minimal beatscapes from Cleveland’s own Twine and DJ Veins, and…
Requiem for Larry
So you’re Larry Dolan and things have gotten to sucking something fierce. It was just over two years ago that you bought the Tribe. You had a nasty team and a sold-out stadium that the city built tax-free. Gotta love that welfare. You could charge $19 for the bleachers and five for a beer, which…
Mystikal
We may never get back the true Mystikal, the real Mystikal, the Mystikal who put his skills on the table first, then looked around for some well-deserved ass. That was the Mystikal of “Y’all Ain’t Ready Yet,” and indeed we weren’t. When the New Orleans rapper dropped that single in 1995, it was like a…
Korn, the Untouchable Band
They don’t do pop shit: I just wanted to compliment Jason Bracelin for his review of Korn’s Untouchables [Playback, June 12]. The main reason I’m writing you is the comment at the end of the article: “[Untouchables is] a record that raises the bar for this genre so high, Fred Durst couldn’t reach it if…
Marc Anthony
Ever since Marc Anthony made his amateur-musician dad burst into tears with his singing as a child, the New Yorker has wowed Latin music fans, musicians, and critics alike with his powerful, agile, and clear tenor. He easily swoops from an intimate, breathy recitative to vibrato-laden high notes in the space of a few bars.…
Laughing Matters
Mrs. Schmickle can’t take it anymore, so she drowns her troubles in a bottle of Stoli every night. When that doesn’t work, she bolts out of class and has a mental breakdown in the teachers’ lounge. Feeling contrite the next day, she indulges the class by letting everyone bring in pet boa constrictors, tarantulas, and…
Norah Jones
Norah Jones’s Come Away With Me is a stylish, jazz-flecked album that’s become an unexpected pop hit (selling for about $10 has surely helped). Produced by Atlantic Records legend Arif Mardin, this polished, sensual CD is about insinuation rather than power; vocalist-pianist Jones and her key backups, bassist Lee Alexander and guitarist Jesse Harris, craft…
ABBA Dabba Do!
Love ’em or hate ’em, ABBA has burrowed so deep into our pop culture, it will take years of nonstop listening to ragged garage rockers to remove the band’s sugary-sweet confections from our heads. The Swedish combo behind songs such as “I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do” and “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!”…
The Flaming Lips
God bless the Flaming Lips. After 1999’s The Soft Bulletin, it was reasonable to believe that whatever rock’s philosopher kings concocted as a follow-up would be a letdown. You may check those diminished expectations at the door to your Discman, however: Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots is easily the equal of its predecessor, a great…
Hot Legs
On the first day (of opening weekend), the Lord said, “Let there be, like, this year’s Evolution or sumpin’, only with more hope for significant box-office returns,” and there is, and it is called Eight Legged Freaks, and it is good. The silly title needs a hyphen in the compound adjective (does no one comprehend…
Red Hot Chili Peppers
The Red Hot Chili Peppers are at their best when mining singer Anthony Kiedis’s turbulent past. “Under the Bridge” and “Scar Tissue” are the band’s most satisfying songs, because there’s a sense of authenticity behind the aural memoir. And because the frat-boy faux funk the Peppers pioneered in the ’80s is absent. By the Way,…
Mouseterfully Done
It took the creative giants behind Men in Black II five years to come up with a flat and uninspired sequel that not only treads familiar ground, but does so with far less pizzazz than the original. It took the forces behind Stuart Little 2 a mere two years to unveil their imaginative and engaging…
Solomon Burke
About two-thirds through “Fast Train,” one of two superb Van Morrison songs on this extraordinary disc, Solomon Burke sings so powerfully, he just about lifts you off your feet. Burke’s vivid baritone, never less than inspiring, infuses Morrison’s urgent, cautionary tale with that full measure of luminosity available only to the greatest soul singers. At…
Sub Par
Of all the A-list men playing dedicated authority figures, Star Wars alums Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson remain among the most amusing and pleasing, which is why K-19: The Widowmaker glides along engagingly rather than sinking. In many ways, it’s just another cramped, dank submarine movie — bells, whistles, leaks, danger! danger! — but well-established…
Gatlin
Not since Trent Reznor declared that “This machine is obsolete” on 1999’s slow-selling The Fragile has a rocker from Cleveland damned himself to the extent that Gatlin frontman Jon Drake does on his band’s latest. “We’re in the current of what just came around,” he sings on the disc’s title cut, a ham-fisted rap-rock workout…
After M*A*S*H
At this very moment, members of the Television Critics Association are gathered at the Ritz-Carlton in Pasadena, California, to preview this fall’s new series, interview those responsible for them and, finally, gorge themselves silly and drink themselves stupid on the networks’ dwindling dime. This event, the so-called “press tour,” takes place twice a year: once,…
Dag Nasty
Beware the reformed punk band, too often more concerned with raising funds than consciousness. The abrupt resurrection of Dag Nasty, the D.C. melodic hardcore gang a full decade removed from its last album, ain’t exactly a Sex Pistols-style rock and roll swindle, but these cats certainly didn’t reform and cut the brand-spankin’-new Minority of One…
