Smooth Moves
Just talking about tonight’s Spyro Gyra concert at Cain Park’s Evans Amphitheater gets Jay Beckenstein, the group’s founder and saxophonist, a little misty-eyed. “Cleveland was our very first road trip,” he recalls. Since 1978, the jazz-fusion combo from Buffalo has played our city more than three dozen times. “Playing and meeting our audiences — that…
Dino’s Plea
I recently found out that there are a lot of ’80s hair/rock bands and artists of today playing in Burgettstown, PA. All the way until December! Korn, George Thorogood, Aerosmith with Motley Crue, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Twisted Sister, Roger Waters and many others. Many of these artists are not coming to Cleveland. Why…
AFI/the Dillinger Escape Plan
California’s AFI was touted as the next Nirvana with 2003’s Sing the Sorrow, and not just because the disc was overseen by Nevermind producer Butch Vig. The mall-punk kings garnered moderate airplay with the elegant video for “The Leaving Song Pt. 2” and the melodic rocket of a single “Girl’s Not Grey.” The disc stopped…
Ain’t No Sunshine
Like the shambling VW van its hapless characters steer from Albuquerque to Redondo Beach, Little Miss Sunshine is a rickety vehicle that travels mostly downhill. How this antic extended sitcom from first-time feature-makers Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris left Sundance with an eight-figure deal and reams of enthralled press clippings is beyond comprehension, even in…
Happy Feet
Chicago’s Hubbard Street 2 defies classification. The six-piece ensemble leaps and bounds through modern dance, ballet, and Latin steps — often within the same piece. “The company is very fluid by design, based on transition and continued flow,” says artistic director Julie Nakagawa Bottcher. “You see the dancers transform themselves from piece to piece through…
Follow That Story: Iraq War Vet Still Screwed
The last time we met up with Iraq War veteran Rick Clasen (“Discarded Heroes,” January 18, 2006), the VA was doing little to help him receive treatment or benefits for the post-traumatic stress disorder and other disabilities he suffered in Iraq. Since the story was published, it appears that little has changed. In April 2005,…
Oneida
The indie-rock canon is lucky to have Oneida. In 10 years together, the members of this Brooklyn collective have never compromised their enigmatic sound. For them, messy is beautiful, and disjointed ramblings sum up their concocted lyrics. Happy New Year, which was initially slated to be a three-piece head trip, is the band’s eighth album…
Slam Dunk
Originally, Ward Serrill set out to make a documentary — and a short one at that — about Bill Resler, an avuncular tax professor at the University of Washington, who thought he knew enough about basketball to coach the girls’ team at Roosevelt High School in Seattle. Never mind that he had no previous experience…
Jammin’ in Your Jammies
Ilona Simon will relax the dress code tonight at the upscale Budapest Blonde so that patrons can slip into their robes and negligees for the inaugural Pajama Wine Party. “We thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to sit around in your pajamas on a Saturday night and chill with a glass of wine?'” says Simon, the…
Sammy Defends Channel 19
Headline: Treating the rich just like the poor By Sam Fulwood III Date: July 25, 2006 Topic: Sam offers his thoughtful analysis of the Randy Lerner-Action News standoff. After editors turn down yet another request from Sam to increase the size of his mug shot, he writes more, somehow making the story about race and…
Camera Obscura
The cover of Camera Obscura’s third and best album, Let’s Get Out of This Country, is the perfect embodiment of both the band’s aesthetic and principal songwriter Tracyanne Campbell’s lyrical bent. After all, it’s a shot of a girl named Petra, a friend of the band, sitting in a green, V-cut dress, her elbows tucked…
London Fog
For 35 years, Woody Allen was a long shot to stray into the Bronx or Staten Island — much less the alien reaches of London. The creator of Manhattan has always been joined to his chosen borough like pastrami on rye — so when he ventured abroad last year to direct the intriguing morality tale…
Scroll Lotta Love
We really dig the Dead Sea Scrolls on display at the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage. Tonight, Adolfo Roitman will explain more about them in a talk titled “The Significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls for Judaism and Christianity.” Roitman, a senior lecturer at the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, has written several…
Long-Haul Truckers
It’s not a typical Drive-By Truckers show. The sets are short, the amphitheater is half-empty, and hardly anyone is drunk by the end. While this evening is antithetical to the band’s standard alcohol-soaked all-nighters, singer-guitarist Patterson Hood is quite satisfied to be opening for the Black Crowes. The last five years have redeemed a decade…
Walt Sanders and the Cadillac Band
Elvis may be gone, but he remains ever-present. As the bard Mojo Nixon once sang: “Elvis is everywhere/Elvis is everything/Elvis is everybody/Elvis is still the king/Why do you think they call it evolution anyway? It’s really Elvislution.” Nature’s course continues with Walt Sanders and his eight-piece Cadillac Band’s tribute to Mr. Presley. Wearing a white…
Revenge of the Nerd
Once spectacles are perched on your nose, you become a nonentity, fair game for scorn and ridicule. So it’s hard to believe that one of the most respected rock stars of all time was a scrawny kid sporting heavy horn-rimmed glasses, the ultimate nerd fashion accessory. Almost comical in appearance, but possessing a fierce commitment…
Psycho Circus
Writer Sara Gruen never went to a circus when she was young. In fact, she knew very little about the big top when she pitched the idea for her latest novel, Water for Elephants, which is set behind the scenes of a Depression-era traveling circus. “I read a newspaper article about a photographer who traveled…
Better Than Ever
Fate has been a lot kinder to Mission of Burma the second time around. Largely ignored during its initial four-year run from 1979-’83, the band — with its aggro mix of post-punk, art rock, and the avant-garde, not to mention its sound-barrier-breaking live gigs — was still being branded “ahead of its time” almost two…
Mary J. Blige after-party
Mirage’s Mary J. Blige after-party isn’t officially connected with the diva’s Saturday-night concert at Nautica’s Plain Dealer Pavilion. But even though she might not show up, half the crowd will be there, dressed to kill, and the riverfront club has some of the city’s liveliest upscale parties on a regular Saturday night. Besides, who can…
Sweet & Sour
It’s damn near impossible to get irritated at a theater company that enthusiastically stages classical and quasi-classical plays for free in the open air. There may be a more enjoyable way to spend a warm summer night with the Cleveland Shakespeare Festival, but it would probably have to involve cucumber martinis or Tin Roof sundaes.…
Downlow No More
Parties, talent shows, and workshops await Cleveland’s Black, Gay & Proud all this week. The festival launches at 6 tonight with screenings of the gay-affirming movies How Do I Look? and Feminine Sense at the AIDS Taskforce of Greater Cleveland (3210 Euclid Avenue). Other events include August 4’s Black-at-Cha party at 7:30 p.m. at Club…
Beer Nuts
There are plenty of reasons to check out today’s Blues & Brews event, including chefs preparing tasty dishes and music by the Bluestones. But there are more than four dozen reasons stay: Namely, 50 microbreweries from across the globe. Wisconsin’s Leinenkugel Brewing, California’s Mendocino Brewing Company, and Lindeman’s from Belgium will be serving some of…
Runaway Tame
When it comes to the ’80s and ’90s bands on which Minneapolis stakes its legendary reputation, there’s Prince, Hüsker Dü, and the Replacements — great acts all. Then there’s Soul Asylum. Not that a little pride for local ’90s heroes is something to be ashamed of. But Minneapolis invests Soul Asylum with a mystique that’d…
The Knife
The images conjured by the duo’s name and album title might have you jumping to conclusions about sullen faces, black clothing, veils, evil omens, and wicked synth. And you’d be right. Swedish siblings Olof Dreijer and Karin Dreijer Andersson even have taken to wearing monstrous masks and dressing like crows in their efforts to stir…
Capsule reviews of current area theater presentations.
Ain¹t We Got Fun! — Writer-director Michael McFaden has come up with a fetching idea, weaving a storyline around vintage, gay-themed songs from pre- and post-Depression-era America. But what should be a sprightly romp instead shudders to an exhausted halt a full two and a half hours after the opening number. The central plot involves…
Test Run
It’s not unusual for a band to try a few new songs onstage before it records them. At tonight’s pair of shows at Nighttown, the Bill Ransom Quintet performs what its frontman calls a final “dress rehearsal” before heading into the studio to record a new album. “It’s not your average quintet, where your saxophone…
Untouchables
The setting of Iron Island is an old oil boat docked off the coast of Iran. Its many nooks and crannies serve as home to the country’s poor, handicapped, and neglected. Needless to say, this Iranian film doubles as an allegory for the nation’s woes. If class hierarchy even among these abandoned denizens doesn’t drive…
Sound Advice
Patrick Carney is the impeccably dressed, slightly unhinged drummer for the Akron duo the Black Keys. What do you credit for the disproportionate wealth of good Akron bands? I guess it’s the hatred, jealousy, and contempt all bands feel for each other here. It’s a real “close” scene. Also, the rock and roll class they…
Pharrell
It’s only fitting that Pharrell Williams has finally jettisoned collaboration for a solo career. The hallmark of his six-year chart reign as half of the superproducer team the Neptunes has always been reduction, stripping down urban music to its essence. That genius remains on In My Mind — most definitively on the single “Can I…
Eating for Two
Feed (TLA) Remember the old jokes about “What’s grosser than gross”? The makers of Feed do, as they prove in the first 10 minutes — one-upping their opening scene featuring a voluntary victim of cannibalism by bringing in a guy who gets nekkid and shoves cheeseburgers down the throat of his 800-pound, lingerie-clad, bedridden girlfriend.…
Drumming Up Interest
Drumming is good for you. And at today’s third-annual Drum and Music Festival, area percussionists beat that message into folks’ heads for more than 12 hours. “Drumming relieves stress,” says organizer George Lawrence, who owns George’s Drum Shop in Cuyahoga Falls and also plays skins in the country-rock band Poco. “It’s therapy [that] stimulates healing…
Darth Vader’s Ipod
Loras John Schissel conducts the Blossom Festival Orchestra tonight in a program that includes John Williams’ familiar music from the Star Wars movies and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Also on tap are lesser-known scores from Schindler’s List and the Harry Potter flicks. The set also features tunes by old-school film composers Franz Waxman (Prince Valiant) and…
Sound/Stage
SOUND Dead Even, “Cancerous Demonica” (www.myspace/deadeven) Like an expressionistic, guitar-driven ode to invasive, metastatic carcinomas, this song pulses with malevolent purpose and frenetic, steamrolling throb. The punishing, piston-churning bottom end recalls the jaw-crushing punch of Slayer, while singer JC bellows like a wounded bear. The guitar is wild and mercurial, running from tight, controlled blasts…
Michael Franti & Spearhead
The artists who have offered themselves as Bob Marley’s rightful heirs are too numerous to count. Activist rapper, poet, and singer Michael Franti is too smart to fall into that trap, but his latest album — partly recorded in Jamaica, where Marley’s mentor Chris Blackwell was lured out of semiretirement to assist — will encourage…
Over Your Head
Flight sims — games that emulate the experience of being in a cockpit — are plenty popular on PCs, but have never taken off on home consoles. This is partly due to their inherent complexity. When it comes to recreating an entire cockpit’s worth of buttons, levers, and gizmos, the keyboard is much better suited…
Jesus Walks and Sings!
Jesus Christ Superstar rises again. Blossom Music Center’s Porthouse Theatre has resurrected Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s hip-swiveling, hair-shaking musical about the Messiah’s last seven days on earth for a three-week run. “I am more excited about this show than I have ever been about any other production,” says director Terri Kent. She put…
All By Himself
After Jeff Guhde plays songs from his debut CD tonight, he’ll pass around a hat to collect tips, as is customary at the Barking Spider. “They don’t guarantee you any money, but you always walk away with a pretty good amount,” says the 25-year-old Cleveland Institute of Art grad. “And it’s a great way to…
Flip Sides
Pro: The Fray’s first single is a modern-rock meteor that tethers glacier-sized hooks and studio gloss to a downer diatribe that makes abject misery feel as epic and wonderful as winning the pennant race with a gang of farm-leaguers. Singer Isaac Slade surfs endorphin waves of optimistic piano and guitar, seething and crouching on the…
Roman Candle
So there’s finally a contender to succeed Whiskeytown in the Next Big North Carolina Band sweepstakes — Chapel Hill’s Roman Candle. Comparisons to Ryan Adams’ old outfit are superficially valid, since Wee Hours’ songs are often gussied up country weepers about characters who smoke a lot and seek release in drink — not to mention…
Capsule reviews of current area art exhibitions.
NEW Shades of Gray, Grains of Sand — At first, it’s hard to see what Northeast Ohio artists Damon Reaves and Ray Febo have in common. They work in different media, strive toward different messages, and are far apart in age (Febo is approaching career’s end, Reaves just embarking). Then comes a powerful realization: They’re…
A Real Doll
In the live-action Barbie Live in Fairytopia (which opens at Playhouse Square tonight), the world’s most famous doll comes to life in a story that may confuse anyone who’s not a prepubescent girl: Barbie’s flower home is sick, and the fairies are having trouble flying. It’s up to Barbie to save the day. “It’s about…
Screams in the Dark
It was a cold February morning in 2002, and as usual, Melissa Brown was desperate for a fix. She was working the corner of West 65th and Detroit. A black truck pulled over, driven by a well-muscled man with clean teeth, a flat nose, and big hands. He invited her inside. As he pulled away…
Back to the Future
For a band that lasted just eight months, during which it never released an album, Rocket From the Tombs casts a long shadow. In the 30 years since the group’s breakup, its legend has grown to dwarf its local legacy. Not just because the breakup led to the creation of the Dead Boys and Pere…
Black Angels
With all the Brian Jonestown mass o’ curs barking at the door, getting psyched about a psych-rock band is a task, mainly because most of those swirlers basically turn the reverb button to “obvious” and pretend they’re not jam bands. Instead, try tripping to the Austin, Texas combo Black Angels. Singer-guitarist Christian Bland’s nasal, searing…
Here are the week’s best releases from the pop-culture universe:
CD — Rockin’ Bones: 1950s Punk & Rockabilly: This four-disc set offers some of the rawest and scariest rock ever made, including tunes by household names like Johnny Cash, Elvis, and Roy Orbison. But it’s the forgotten rebels who stand out. Freddie and the Hitch-Hikers rattle walls with the theremin (way before Brian Wilson discovered…
Freaky Friday
Vetiver, a San Francisco freak-folk group led by Andy Cabic, is easier on the ears than most of its contemporaries. the warm organic sounds on Vetiver’s new CD, To Find Me Gone, come naturally, unlike those of other other artists of this genre (we’re looking at you, Brightblack Morning Light). And Cabic keeps things fresh…
Drunk-Dialing Success
It was a sight he’d seen plenty of times: A cluster of gel-haired twentysomethings, guzzling Jäger Bombs and grinding their designer jeans against any female they could find. But on this March night last year, after a regrettable amount of drinking on West Sixth, Mike Polk decided he’d seen enough. Polk, 28, is best known…
Still Blazing
Cleveland cult band Balls of Fire celebrates its 25th anniversary Saturday, August 5, at the Beachland Ballroom (15711 Waterloo Road). With more ex-members than original songs, the group has always been a reliable draw. “Our role in Cleveland rock history is to be around when you’re sick of lame local acts forever being touted as…
Chris Allen
The Story of Gasoline continues on Goodbye Girl and the Big Apple Circus, the solo debut from ex-Rosavelt singer-guitarist Chris Allen. In a hung-over daze, the doomed party boys in his tunes aren’t sure where their weekends went wrong or why a string of girls decided to leave them. With the jangling title track and…
Our top DVD picks for the week of July 25.
2005 Academy Award Nominated Short Films (Magnolia) Animaniacs: Volume 1 (Warner Bros.) Ask the Dust (Paramount) Awesome; I Fuckin’ Shot That! (ThinkFilm) The Benchwarmers (Sony) Blackballed: The Bobby Dukes Story (Shout! Factory) Bogie & Bacall: The Signature Collection (Warner Bros.) Chappelle’s Show: The Lost Episodes (Paramount) Electric Shadows (First Run) Final Destination 3 (New Line)…
It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane! It’s a Dancer!
Don’t be surprised today if you see a 5-foot-9 brunette tap-dancing around town dressed like a Justice League cast-off. That’s just Amy Compton in her alter ego as “Fahrenheit,” a high-stepping superhero who appears at a lunchtime Street Beats performance. “I’m obsessed with making a superhero dance,” she says. “Wonder Woman made a big impression…
True Rollers
It’s Monday night at Rocky’s Roller Skating Rink in Akron when Yung Joc’s latest hit starts vibrating the room’s retro décor. Fifty bodies bounce and swoosh along the aging polyurethane floor. Meet me in the club, it’s goin’ down. A line of ladies with updos and fat hoop earrings leans back in unison, dropping their…
Danielson Famile
Daniel Smith is a missionary of literary metaphors, falsetto vocals, and strange little uniforms. If that sounds weird, the description is not nearly as idiosyncratic as the music of his thesis-project-turned-band deserves. Smith — and lately, a team so large that the liner notes actually credit a project manager — squeaks out avant-folk through an…
A Decade Behind
“Liftoff,” A Decade Behind’s story of a rocket blast-off, begins with a tense moment: a noise collage of control-room recordings, ominous bass lines, and fractured guitars. Will the fuel lines ignite? The answer (no) comes eight excruciatingly repetitive minutes later, offering little justification for the initial buildup. This coed duo from Cleveland attempts many styles…
Rub-a-Dub-Dub
The eight-seat whirlpool at Around the Corner’s weekly Hot Tub Party has been tempting a few patrons to try and break at least one liquor law. “Some think they can go in the buff, but the state says that’s a no-no,” says bar manager Char Neargardner. “We have everybody taking a dip in boxers and…
A DeWinning Slogan
You know a candidate’s in trouble when he resorts to a slogan that tries to turn being boring into a virtue. Such is the case with “He’s not flashy, but Senator DeWine gets things done,” the grasping-at-straws mantra of Senator Mike DeWine’s campaign. But last week brought the worst setback yet for Mr. Uncharisma. U.S.…
Brain Surgeons NYC
The Brain Surgeons have been operating since 1993 and have given the world eight original CDs and a compilation. Now the Surgeons, who recently added the NYC to their name, have a new member on the staff. Joining ex-Blue Öyster Cult drummer Albert Bouchard, his wife, guitarist-rock critic Deborah Frost, and bassist David Hirschberg on…
Whiskey on a Sunday
Whiskey on a Sunday isn’t a leering, Behind the Music scandal sheet or a candid slice of on-the-road shenanigans. It’s a loving portrait that takes the time to delicately shade the personalities of all seven group members, illustrating in the process how they tie together to create rowdy Irish folk-punk. At the center of it…
Spin Cycle
It’s been a long time since Cleveland has seen dozens of DJs under one roof, but that changes at tonight’s Chunk! “If this goes off well, there’ll be more shows,” says DJ Doug Burkhart, one of 30 DJs spinning at the 12-hour dance fest. “It will give promoters faith to do shows with more headliners.”…
Playboy Undressed
On the 20th floor of the Crowne Plaza Hotel sat two dozen heavily made-up, bleached-blond girls in jean skirts and hot pants so short they looked like bikini bottoms. It could only mean one thing: It was time for the annual Playboy auditions. Editors of the magazine’s special-editions issues (college girls, vixens) were here looking…
Severn Records Soul & Blues Revue
Classic soul music, which ruled the urban airwaves till the mid-’70s, survives these days mostly as a connoisseurs’ genre, preserved by dedicated indie labels. Emulating the chitlin’-circuit package tours typical of soul’s golden era, Maryland’s Severn Records has put two of the classic genre’s better present-day practitioners out on the road. At home with either…
Other Worldly
Like the dining room itself, the summer menu at Sergio’s in University Circle is small yet stylish, filled with colorful, creative touches that elevate it far above its size. For that, credit goes to owner and well-seasoned chef Sergio Abramof, who founded his namesake salon near Severance Hall in 1995. Since then, the Brazilian-born Abramof,…
Such Great Heights
Party in the Heights, Heights Arts’ weekly outdoor summer concert series, mixes it up from week to week. And it’s not just the entertainment — which includes jazz, alt-country, and rock groups — that gets rotated. Each Thursday, concerts take place in different Cleveland Heights locations. Tonight’s show features steel-drum combo Panic at Cedar Fairmount,…
Guilt by Association
Sleaze at The PD: Whether or not a person is an independent contractor makes no difference. The man [“A Worker Scorned,” July 12] is representing The PD; therefore his actions do have an effect on the reputation of the newspaper. Not to mention the fact that this dickweed is using the paper to solicit women,…
Tim Fite
Just when you figured — in the wake of Beck, DJ Shadow, and the Avalanches — that high-concept sampling had hit the wall, another white boy manages to come up with another wrinkle. Not only does Brooklyn rapper and producer Tim Fite reportedly refuse to sample from any CD that cost more than a buck;…
Valley Forage
Here’s an interesting twist on the “interactive dinner party” concept: On Sunday, August 6, Tom Wiandt of Killbuck Valley Mushrooms will lead a pack of hopeful diners into the rolling woodlands behind his Wayne County farm to forage for roots, berries, mushrooms, and assorted greenery. When they return, chef Ben Bebenroth (Spice of Life Catering…
Hips Don’t Lie
At the weekly Middle Eastern Dance Sessions With Nailah, Nancy Schuemann teaches ladies how to shake their hips, move their rib cages, and seductively work veils into the mix. “Originally, it was a dance by women for women,” says Schuemann (aka Nailah), who dismisses a prevailing myth about the traditional dance. “Belly dancers are not…
Feeding Junior
Saturday, July 29, at 4 p.m. a group of families will protest comments made on Fox 8 Cleveland’s morning news by a representative of Great Northern Mall’s management company (Westfield) after an anonymous mother was refused permission to breastfeed her infant before paying for her purchases at Aeropostale. While we are angry at that particular…
Mary J. Blige
Mary J. Blige Don’t assume that Mary J. Blige’s happy marriage to record exec Kendu Isaacs has dulled the emotional edge that’s made her the most compelling R&B singer of the past 15 years. Sure, she spends plenty of 2005’s The Breakthrough singing about the sort of romantic satisfaction that the bulk of her earlier…
Undercover of the Night
Michael Mann’s Miami Vice is like a car that’s been stripped of everything but its two bucket seats and rebuilt from the ground up. The protagonists are a pair of detectives named Sonny Crockett (Colin Farrell) and Ricardo Tubbs (Jamie Foxx), and a cover of Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight” finds its way onto…
