Thomas Tanks
Peter Fonda is the top-billed star of Thomas and the Magic Railroad. The plot involves Fonda and Thomas the Tank Engine steaming across the country, Steppenwolf blaring on the soundtrack, to Mardi Gras, a stash of dope taped under Thomas’s cow-catcher. They have an acid trip with New Orleans hookers. Then, at the end, Fonda…
Murder City Devils
With In Blood and Name, their recently released third album of howling hard rock/punk shock madness, Seattle’s Murder City Devils cement their reputation for lovingly translating all the right kinds of influences into their own sonic maelstrom. From the Stooges’ mallet-on-an-anvil thud to ? & the Mysterians’ insistent Farfisa organ fills, the Devils have pitched…
Don’t Cheer, Don’t Tell
It would be the easiest thing in the world to write off But I’m a Cheerleader, the story of a teenager discovering her sexual identity through a program designed to repress it, as a Saturday Night Live sketch somewhat awkwardly inflated to feature length. But when you start looking deeper into the real-life stories that…
Earth Crisis
Without all the crossover appeal and hilarious guitar solos, Earth Crisis preaches the same gospel of capitalist hypocrisy and personal identity that has made Rage Against the Machine iconoclast superstars. In fact, Earth Crisis might even be more stringent and political. You certainly won’t land on Total Request Live or the cover of Rolling Stone…
Down With Denny’s
There is no suburban political force more ferocious than a band of angry neighbors, united to demand that their local government protect them from the evils of development, noise, and traffic. So Lakewood has discovered in recent months, as hundreds of angry neighbors from a few streets on the city’s west side rose up to…
Soundbites
Given that Ozzfest has developed a reputation for breaking new hard rock acts (Slipknot and Godsmack gained larger audiences after performing on last year’s tour), it’s hard not to approach the all-day show, now in its fifth year, as a barometer for bands on the verge of making the transition from the underground to the…
One Slim Hope
The women are diseased. Take a ride on the East Side, along Cedar Avenue, deep into the East 70s, where they beckon to passing cars, with long painted fingernails and spaghetti straps slipping down their arms. One minute they’re there, oblivious to carnivorous looks and little children on the sidewalk. The next they’re gone. Ten…
Jimi Tenor
Since the mid-’90s, this Finnish king of kitsch and catchy electro-lounge music has reveled benevolently in his cultish following, pushing the saccharine psycho-go-go ’60s aesthetic so far down people’s throats that he even initiated a line of clothes called “Tenorwear” to be donned, ostensibly, by members of the Jimi Tenor Fan Club. All this adulation…
Walking the Plank
Cruel wind! Sailing his new $765 million lakefront development plan before reporters at the Rock Hall Friday, Mayor Michael White promised to “hear from every single individual who wants to add their voice and their vision to this.” Every single individual, it seems, except for City Council Prez Mike Polensek, other council members, and the…
Ultimate Fakebook
A key line on Ultimate Fakebook’s major label debut, This Will Be Laughing Week, goes like this: “I remember when the backbeat wasn’t programmed in and heroes were still human.” Sure, it’s an obvious swipe at whatever mainstream music you despise the most, but in the case of Ultimate Fakebook, a trio from Kansas, its…
To Thy Bee Self Be True
The stars freeze mid-twinkle over the eerily quiet streets, walked by people who firmly believe the night ended long ago. It’s an unkind hour to be an accordion-playing transsexual in a bumblebee costume, trying to liven things up. “You gotta eat your spinach,” sings the burlesque bumblebee, whose name is Baby Dee. “What it did…
The Glands
For a pop band, Athens, Georgia’s Glands are exceptionally complex, offering a musical structure and presentation that has more directions than the assembly manual for a Chinese bicycle. With a Beatlesque naïveté, Big Star eyes, and a crafty wit that nods to Andy Partridge, Robyn Hitchcock, and Todd Rundgren, the Glands bring a distinctly American…
Porn to Sell
It’s tempting to think there’s something twisted about her tale. After all, she was a mere 18 the first time she had sex in front of a camera–for money, small change that would soon enough blossom into a pile of cash–and did so only at the insistence of her boyfriend, who had worked for months…
Mr. Downchild
This album, the fourth from blues singer-guitarist Mr. Downchild (Steve Brazier), finds him playing without his band, the Houserockers, or his hero, Robert Lockwood Jr. It’s just him, a few guitars, and a harmonica or two. He plays it the way the bluesmen of old played it — with no frills. Though a studio effort,…
Honoring the Slain
School keeps the word alive: I just wanted to let you know it was really awesome that you did a huge article on the murder of the four missionaries in El Salvador [“Unforgiven,” July 13]. I also wanted you to know that, in the article, you named some places in Cleveland that are dedicated to…
Back to the Future
Steven Thurston, the Ohio State University art professor whose compelling sculptures are now on view at the Sculpture Center, says that he is interested in exploring “the political ramifications of scale.” By that, Thurston presumably means the tendency of totalitarian architecture to forget about human beings as it focuses on its task of glorifying the…
Road to Utopia
Just when disenchanted Cleveland theatergoers, bored to distraction by endless Evita resurrections and Shakespeare runarounds, are about to flee to the stages of Canada, Wooster’s Ohio Light Opera company once again comes to the rescue. It is offering salvation in an exquisitely packaged esoteric work. Utopia Limited, or The Flowers of Progress, is Gilbert and…
Road Trip!
Friendly neighborhood taverns, grungy corner dives, atmospheric shot-and-a-beer joints: If there is one thing we have plenty of in Cleveland, it’s little eateries serving up humble food. Even if all you have in your pocket till payday is a ten-spot, you can still dine like a king (well, maybe just an earl) on fried baloney…
What Would Papa Say?
Hudson’s new Hemingway’s (200 Main Street, 330-650-0013), Dean and Dana Hoover’s casual Main Street spot, has taken the place of the former, more sophisticated Old Whedon Grille. The stylistic about-face took place on July 7 and has found the kitchen staff grilling burgers and frying onion rings rather than whipping up seared ahi tuna crusted…
Into the Groove
At a poolside party on the Fourth of July, Cyde singer-guitarist Shawn Hackel pointed a roman candle at bandmate Mark Sterle and nailed him with it, setting off a flurry of volleys between the two. Drunk and out of control, Hackel turned to run, and his feet slipped out from underneath him, causing his head…
Fireside Chat
Give a pagan a bonfire, and he’ll play you a song or tell you a story. At least that’s what the Nature Center at Shaker Lakes would have you believe during its Bagpipes, Bonfires, and Celtic Storytelling this weekend. “We talk about the presence of fire and why that’s so important,” naturalist Mark Knapp, who…
Family Affair
Sometimes it seems like our band is cursed,” laughs guitarist Jon Quitner, known to Tight Bros. From Way Back When fans as Quitty. “I don’t know. Bands go through a lot worse. I mean, we’ve never had our stuff ripped off . . . I’m looking for wood to knock.” That would be the ultimate…
On the Waterfront
We need to get one thing straight, right off the bat: There are no merchant marines. Captain Paul J. Esbensen of the S.S. John W. Brown — a WWII “liberty ship” that will dock in Cleveland this weekend — is very clear that there is a merchant marine, but no merchant marines. “The United States…
Fiver
Hailing from Modesto, California, Fiver could be mistakenly linked to Pavement, which also emerged out of the sleepy Northern California town. Although the comparison would not be too far gone in some respects — both bands play a mutated version of accepted pop structures — it would be impossible to directly connect the two sounds.…
Buck Teeth
The bewildering penchant of recent American movies for glorifying the lovable naif, the perpetual adolescent, and the village idiot takes a strange new turn in Miguel Arteta’s dark comedy Chuck & Buck. Arteta’s hero, Buck O’Brien (Mike White), is a 27-year-old manchild who eats lollipops all day long, takes refuge in a toy-strewn bedroom listening…
Dwight Yoakam
Of the five albums Dwight Yoakam has released over the past five years, only one (1998’s clunker A Long Way Home) actually contains original material. He’s filled the rest of the space and time with a covers album, a Christmas collection, a greatest-hits set, and in the case of his latest record, dwightyoakamacoustic.net, unplugged versions…
