Fun With Forgery
7/8 – 8/28 Children are putting paintbrush to palette this summer at the Akron Art Museum’s Colorful Creations, a do-it-yourself art project for kindergartners through sixth-graders. The twice-daily classes start in the museum’s upstairs gallery, where little ones follow a half-hour guided tour of the institution’s summer exhibition In a Romantic Mood. The show features…
Smokey Robinson
Smokey Robinson is renowned for having one of Motown’s great voices, but it’s his songwriting skills that cemented his status as a legend. Bob Dylan once called him America’s greatest living poet, and Robinson’s signature numbers — “Shop Around,” “The Tracks of My Tears,” “I Second That Emotion,” and dozens of others — certainly back…
See No Evil
When the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry examined Cady Road in North Royalton last year, it found drinking water so loaded with natural gas that you could light it with a match. The feds deemed the situation fraught with peril — as in the fire and explosion kind — and called it…
Freedom to Choose
FRI 7/4 Don’t need an Independence Day headache jockeying for a good seat at Cleveland’s fireworks celebration? Here are some alternative places to party on Uncle Sam’s birthday. Akron’s Fourth of July Festival at Lock 3 Park. There’s plenty of food and lots of live music at this three-day celebration. The Smithereens’ (pictured) power pop…
In Flames/Soilwork
In Flames and Soilwork have both recently released albums that push the boundaries of death metal by incorporating electronic textures, surprisingly groove-oriented rhythms, and (gasp!) melodic hooks. In Flames’ latest, Reroute to Remain, is particularly easy on the ears — but don’t worry, it’s not a total pop-chart move. All the band has really done…
Classics on the Grass
Blossom Festival director Jahja Ling knows all about classical music’s stuffy connotations. He knows that most people don’t want to get dressed up to listen to an orchestra — especially in summer. And he knows there’s a dividing line between popular music and music that’s supposed to be good for you. That’s why he’s doing…
Wilde at Heart
7/4 – 7/19 Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest is the 19th-century comedy that still plays well today, says John Woodson, director of the Porthouse Theatre production that opens Friday. “He takes the piss out of the society of that day,” he says. “Today, we also have a lot of conventions and do’s and…
Xiu Xiu
In early 2002, Northern California’s Xiu Xiu released one of the most ridiculously challenging and morosely honest pieces of avant-garde indie electronic pop to date, borrowing elements of British post-punk, noisy electronic techno, and — most intriguingly — the Gamelan Orchestra. Knife Play was hailed by some and cast aside by even more for its…
This Week’s Day-By-Day Picks
Thursday, July 3 This year’s Party in the Heights series, a revolving music festival at locations around Cleveland Heights, offers up to four nights of entertainment each week. The next few weeks feature open-mic poetry, jazz, and a street fair. Tonight’s performance on Coventry is by the Trail Hawgs, whose blend of American roots music…
Machine Watchable
As with “hilarious Islamic comedy” or “sublime Affleck picture,” the term “terrific second sequel” isn’t bandied about too much. Generally, creative juices are drained by Part Three, which makes Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines a gamble. In 1984, those pesky machines tried and failed to destroy humanity, albeit on a tight budget. Then, in…
Shemekia Copeland
In the hands of Shemekia Copeland — or, more precisely, in her pipes — old-school R&B relives its wild youth. The sass and scorch of early Etta James and the relentless drive of a mid-’60s Aretha bloom in the work of this Harlem-born daughter of the late Texas blues legend, guitarist Johnny Copeland. Still in…
Dumb Blonde
ABC-TV has penciled into its 2004 schedule a series based upon the 2001 film Legally Blonde, for which a pilot has been made starring someone named Jennifer Hall in the Reese Witherspoon role of Elle Woods, the pretty-dumb-in-pink sorority girl-turned-whip-smart-attorney. MGM, which owns the franchise, shot a two-hour pilot for the show: If the show…
King Gordy
Consider this a travel tip: If you stumble into the dark heart of Detroit’s East Side and look up to see yourself at the crossroads of VanDyke and Harper, count your blessings if burgeoning hip-hop powerhouse King Gordy is your tour guide. It’s a neighborhood that would send most people running home to Mommy, riddled…
How Bad? Sinbad!
DreamWorks’ Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas pulls into port only a week before Walt Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, the theme-park-ride-inspired, Jerry Bruckheimer-produced spectacle with a screenplay co-written by the very men responsible for last year’s Disney-made animated flop Treasure Planet, a deep-space swashbuckler adapted from the Robert…
Dead Meadow
Bust out the black light and the downers, Dead Meadow is here. An unlikely and largely unsuccessful merging of early Pink Floyd psychedelia and Sabbath’s dark metal, Dead Meadow’s music is mostly a bum trip. The music on the band’s latest, Shivering King and Others, represents an interesting idea — one that even contemporary, punk-influenced…
Flight of Fancy
Talk about your insanely ambitious projects: Filmmaker Jacques Perrin got it in his head to record, on film, the many varieties of annual migration to be found in the avian world. Animal actors in general are tough enough, but birds in particular are recalcitrant and skittish subjects, particularly when they’re going about the business of…
Michelle Branch
Like Rob Thomas before her, Michelle Branch got a shot of cred last year when she turned a Santana song into something better than it had any right to be. But “Game of Love” is no “Smooth,” and Branch, a 19-year-old who wants nothing to do with her generation, isn’t sure what she wants to…
Chick Shtick
Back in the 1960s, lounge singer Jack Jones was all over the airwaves, crooning “Wives and Lovers,” which contained an ominous admonition to all stay-at-home married ladies: “Run to his arms the moment he comes home to you/I’m warning you . . .” Heck, we’ve advanced far beyond those Neanderthal times, haven’t we? Well, maybe.…
Gang Starr
It shouldn’t be a surprise that these are hard times for survivors of hip-hop’s golden age. The genre, with its gaze turned ever forward and a built-in impatience for the past, gives no quarter to legends like Public Enemy, KRS-One, and Prince Paul. Besides LL Cool J, the only other act from that era still…
Ain’t Lion
Anyone who doesn’t take a child, grandchild, or inner child to see The Lion King should be arrested for abusing a minor. There are simply too many moments of jaw-dropping spectacle in this touring version of the gargantuan Broadway hit to enumerate. And the flawless blend of pageantry and puppetry, music and mysticism, will stay…
Robert Cray Band
It makes little sense to keep arguing whether Robert Cray is a blues artist. The man has been playing professionally since 1974. Time Will Tell is his 13th album, not counting the reissues and greatest hits. The best compliment you can give the guy is that he’s been consistent while not becoming redundant. Cray’s latest,…
Midwestern Magic
“You know who would have loved these?” asked our venerable dinner companion, tucking into a trembling morsel of braised short rib. “James Beard. He probably would have eaten them with his bare hands.” The rest of us at the table bobbed our heads in agreement, too absorbed in savoring those buttery, boneless beef bits to…
Beyoncé
On her solo debut, Destiny’s Child siren Beyoncé Knowles proves that all her “Independent Woman” sloganeering was more than just R&B hyperbole. Knowles has a songwriting credit on all but 3 of the album’s 15 cuts, and she produced a number of tracks herself. Perhaps this is why the album feels much more like a…
Crib Notes
When his customers speak, Parma restaurant owner and franchisee Joe Doleh listens. And what his Rib Crib patrons were telling him, Doleh reports, is that beyond the menu’s hickory-smoked ribs, brisket, and sausage, what they really wanted was to be able to tuck into a thick steak and wash it down with booze. Unfortunately, while…
Jay Farrar
There was a time when the only thing that would make a member of the notoriously docile alt-country set throw a punch was the debate over which Uncle Tupelo expat was more deserving of attention: Jeff Tweedy or Jay Farrar. They were, after all, the dysfunctional fathers of the whole “No Depression” movement. Polls concerning…
Groggy Eyes
The Grog Shop is a smoky rock club with bombed-out bathrooms and a subway’s aesthetic. The place is dingy and cramped, and packed shows leave you feeling far too well acquainted with the armpits next to you. But underground rock and hip-hop were meant for clubs as gritty as the music, and the Grog has…
Soulless
Breathlessly anticipating the upcoming live album from Kreator? Soulless’s new one should tide you over. The Parma quintet cut its teeth on tribute albums to Metallica and Destruction, and its third release arrives straight outta ’88. The heshers share a post-Christian motif with their Eurometal brethren. Singer Jim Lippucci is a guttural field reporter broadcasting…
Don’t Know How
Last summer, Norah Jones went into the office of Bruce Lundvall, the president of Blue Note Records, and asked him something no musician has ever asked a record label boss. “Haven’t I sold enough records yet?” she wondered. She was tired, cranky, and verging on burnout. Twelve-hour days spent giving interviews to the foreign press…
Joe Rohan
The hard-driving roots rocker “One More” is one of the best new songs you’ll hear this year — from anybody, not just some local drummer on his maiden voyage as a solo act. The rest of Joe Rohan’s debut CD, Walk Along, is a sleep-inducing stroll through all-too-familiar terrain. Perhaps that’s too strong. But with…
Come Sail Away
Fourteen ships from the United States and abroad sail into town next Wednesday for the start of the Cleveland Harborfest — Tall Ships Challenge. The five-day festival begins with a two-hour Parade of Sail past North Coast Harbor, where the ships float in single file at a five-knot pace. This year’s Harborfest follows the inaugural…
Reissue Hell
The SWV Platinum and Gold Collection was the final straw. But who wouldn’t be fed up with how low the bar has fallen for best-of records and other reissued music? This year has seen an unprecedented number of greatest hits, live albums, and special-edition LPs; they’re cheap to produce and turn a profit quickly –…
Silencing Dr. Kirby
There was no single death that did it, no “gotcha!” moment when he suddenly decided that his co-workers were making fatal mistakes. There was instead a mounting death toll, he says, a pall over the nurses, a sense at surgeons’ meetings that too many things were going wrong and nobody was trying to stop it.…
Shore Fire
FRI 7/4 Count Mayor Jane Campbell among the 25,000 people planning to Rock ‘N Boom at Voinovich Park on Friday. The Fourth of July party starts with music by Leo, Three Miles Out, Jaded Era, and Cheap Vinyl (that’s the rock part), and ends with a 20-minute fireworks show (the boom) that begins at dusk.…
PayDirt
Local hard rockers Dirt recently earned an ASCAPlus Award for their moody single “Need.” The award, presented by the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers, recognizes the work of artists in the early stages of their careers. “Need” will be part of Dirt’s forthcoming full-length debut, Welcome to the Pressure Cooker. In other news,…
Letters to the Editor
Anti-cop Agitprop But they don’t pay janitors to go to the gym: “Dead Weight” [June 4] is clearly another anti-police-officer propaganda piece. Kevin Hoffman’s article would have been fair if it had started with “In the early 1980s, police departments nationwide started programs to help officers deal with the trauma of shooting someone in the…
Moonlight 2.106 Mile
7/3 – 7/5 For the first time in its 21-year history, the Cleveland Grand Prix will howl at the moon this year. Twenty-two electrical towers have been erected at Burke Lakefront Airport to illuminate the 2.106-mile track, equaling the intensity of light given off by half a million car headlamps. “The lighting of the track…
Pat Benatar
With no embarrassing attempts at modernizing her sound to relate to the nebulous and mysterious age group known as “the kids,” early MTV vixen Pat Benatar embodies the term “aging gracefully.” Sure, she can’t escape the countless reruns of VH1’s I Love the ’80s, which preserve the badass pixie look she sported during her arena-rock…
Hard Case
Northfield Park is all dolled up for a big Saturday night. The infield shrubs are manicured just so. A necklace of red, white, and blue bunting rings the grandstand. Track officials glitter in tuxedos and evening gowns. Not that fans care. Their eyes fix on the dirt — the half-mile oval where the Battle of…
