Murder Can Be Fun
Mark Zupan doesn’t want your pity. And he’s not too sure how he feels about being a media darling. But ever since he became the breakout star of Murderball, an inspiring documentary about quadriplegic rugby players with the baddest-looking wheelchairs you’ve ever seen, the charismatic Zupan’s goateed and tattooed image has flooded TVs, magazines, and…
Pepper Shakers
Growing up in a small town, we had a pretty limited idea of ethnic fare — mostly pizza and chop suey, scored on the cheap from any of the handful of small Italian or Chinese eateries that dotted the landscape. Sure, our “downtown” had only one drugstore, one bank, and a laundromat; but there were…
Hillbilly Nightmare CD-release party
Hillbilly Nightmare’s Dirt Rock Demons sounds exactly as nasty as you’d hope it would. The guys are from Michigan, but they talk and rock like Clevelanders in Disengage-style songs like album-opener “Drinking.” The crusty rawk tune has the irresistible chorus, “Throw/One back/I’m ready for another.” But we think maybe they stole that from Shakespeare.
This Week’s Day-By-Day Picks
Thursday, July 28 Artists have finally figured out what industrialists have known for more than a century: Local resources are good for business. At the natural history museum’s Resources: Steel, Rubber, Coal, and Salt, more than 50 pieces of art, constructed out of Northeast Ohio’s natural offerings, reveal the accessibility, durability, and even beauty buried…
Wikked Lil’ Girl
Over the course of our phone conversation, which lasted approximately 23 minutes, Esthero did the following: · Snacked on something that resulted in her punctuating every few words with a nonchalant smack of her lips (“I [smack] wanted people to know [smack, smack] that I’d grown vocally [smack].”) · Unironically and unabashedly sang a few…
Weird War
With its hung-over vocals, hallucinatory echo effects, and saucy attitude, Weird War may seem like just another retro band. In truth, it’s a group of playwrights. Each track on Illuminated sets up a neat little world, complete with characters, a plot line, and a set built from evocative musical cues. A girl leaves her old…
Oh %$#@!
In a column last month, Plain Dealer Editor Doug Clifton announced that he was withholding two stories of “profound importance.” Since both were based on sealed documents, he feared their publication would lead to a government investigation, at which point his reporters would either be forced to rat their sources or go to jail. “Because…
Can’t Touch the MMMBop
Musically, the ’90s boil down to this: In January 1992, grunge gods Nirvana knocked pop king Michael Jackson off the No. 1 position on Billboard’s album chart. And for most of the next eight years, commercial radio was unusually diverse. Rhino Entertainment — the folks who brought us the box sets No Thanks! The ’70s…
DJ Craze
There are two types of DJs: Battle DJs and club DJs. Usually, the nimble-fingered scratch junkies who spend months perfecting precise battle routines are either uninterested in working clubs or don’t have the ear for matching up tracks. Miami’s DJ Craze, a three-time winner at the DMC world DJ championships, is an exception. Though his…
Minorities Report
During happy hour at Hamilton’s on Playhouse Square, André Simmons sips his martini, takes a drag from his Camel, and motions to three buddies to join in the conversation at the sleek, mahogany bar. “See all of us?” he asks as he makes a sweeping motion with his hand. “We’re black, and we’re gay. And…
Paperback Writer
In 2002, while holding court in his office overlooking N.Y.C.’s Madison Square Park, David Barker — a friendly young Englishman editing a series of chapbooks on contemporary American fiction — decided that it might be nice to produce a set of books focused not on specific novels, but on specific albums. A motley collection of…
Stinking Lizaveta
The Philadelphia trio Stinking Lizaveta is difficult to describe concisely. The group plays instrumental rock that’s heavy, but not exactly metal — in fact, it’s not always even rock. Guitarist Yanni Papadopoulos cranks his Gibson up, sounding like a cross between the Hidden Hand’s Scott “Wino” Weinrich and Randy Holden. His bassist brother, Alexi, plays…
Idol Worship
FRI 7/29 At Added FX’s Street Beats performance on Friday, look for American Idol finalist Charlie Grigsby in the background. The Elyria native spent some time in the recording studio with the Cleveland hip-hop trio earlier this year, singing a verse of a song (“Vibe”) he wrote for the group’s just-released debut CD, I Ain’t…
Girl Tunes Were Never Like This
Playing a wedding isn’t usually the kind of major accomplishment that helps a band find a national audience. But playing Frank “The Tank” Ricard’s wedding in Old School — that will get your career going. The Dan Band turned heads at the reception for Tank’s ill-fated matrimony, dropping a few well-timed F-bombs into Bonnie Tyler’s…
Bobby Purify
Plain-spoken, affecting, and effective, this is a comeback album both for Bobby Purify and for the pure soul music of the late ’60s and early ’70s. It’s a keeper akin to Don’t Give Up on Me, Solomon Burke’s comeback album of 2002 — Dan Penn, who produced this disc, co-wrote the title track to that…
Pimp Your Ride
THU 7/28 At Greg Jackson’s annual Serotta Demo Days, the usually soft-spoken bike-shop owner perks up when he shows off the custom-built road racer. “It’s not a bike that comes in a box,” he says. “It’s like the Lamborghini of bicycles.” Every July, Jackson invites bike enthusiasts to test-pedal a Serotta on a 50-mile group…
Rebuilding the East Bank
Through the ’90s, the Flats were always hopping. These days, tumbleweeds would blow down the East Bank’s streets if they weren’t paved. But the district still has a pulse, and three new local clubs are betting that the crowds will come back. Under the Shoreway bridge, Cleveland’s Coyote (1187 Old River Road) is modeled on…
Starvations
This L.A. crew stumbles around in disheveled thrift suits, mussed pompadours, and wingtips, looking like ’30s sad sacks out for that spare dime. But it’s not that the Starvations were born too late. If anything, their slashing greaser-folk sounds timeless — assuming that the timeline starts circa 1981 L.A., with roots punks like the Gun…
Road to Ruin
THU 7/28 To research his latest book, Killing Yourself to Live, Chuck Klosterman rented a Ford Tauntan and drove across the U.S. to visit places where the music died. From the Rhode Island nightclub where nearly 100 Great White fans perished in a fire to a field in Iowa where the plane carrying the Big…
Warped Speed
He was the first dude we’ve ever seen play a keyboard with his face. In the back of a converted cargo truck, Sean, synth player for Monet Madrid Madagascar, mashed his instrument into his cheeks. Then he held it behind his head, running his fingers over the keys like an indie-rock Yngwie Malmsteen. It wasn’t…
Greg J
Guitarist-vocalist Greg J has a knack for a phrase and a good sense of the verbal hook. A number of the lyrics on Sun on Rain work pretty well as mood pieces. Where things get dicey is in the coupling of these verses with extended jam segments. While the various rhythm sections here are consistently…
Ton of Funny
7/28-7/31 White comedian Ralphie May feels he’s sometimes operating under a double standard. “I like doing hip-hop comedy, but I get lambasted,” he says. “Eminem does it, and he’s a genius rapper. I do it, and I’m a wigger.” And the whole urban-vibe trip isn’t a flava-of-the-month thing, adds May, a Last Comic Standing vet.…
Scene‘s Cleveland Music Awards 2005
Let’s face it, rock critics are pretty damn annoying. At least, our mothers and significant others tell us as much. So once a year, we take it upon ourselves to step aside and let you, the music fans of Cleveland, sound off on what bands you think are most deserving of recognition in this city.…
Saint Andrew
Andrew (“Saint Andrew”) Charles has been bouncing around Cleveland for 30 years. He’s done bids with underground legends Knifedance and Stepsister, and also spent six years in Los Angeles during the golden age of the city’s punk scene in the early ’80s. Time has taken a toll on him. Wan and weary, he’s distilled the…
Puppy Love
Must Love Dogs, it should be clearly stated, is not the greatest romantic comedy ever made about a quirky couple who meet at a dog park. That honor goes to Dog Park, the oddball 1998 flick starring Luke Wilson and Natasha Henstridge, written and directed by former Kids in the Hall star Bruce McCulloch. You’re…
Brothers Past
Brothers Past is one of those rare bands that defies categorization — at least, after a few listens of the band’s new record, This Feeling’s Called Goodbye. What could, at first, be the future of indietronica explores noodly pastures and emerges as heavy singer-songwriter, jazz-rock fusion before revisiting its bloops and bleeps. Of course, that’s…
Special Ed
Remember the scene in X2, where Wolverine grabs a Dr. Pepper and enlists the aid of Iceman to make it cold? Take the tone of that scene and stretch it out to feature length and you get Sky High, a less angsty, more kid-friendly movie about teenagers attending a school for superheroes. Throw in a…
Duwayne Burnside
As the pool of Mississippi bluesmen, so belatedly celebrated over the last 10 years, continues to shrink, it’s good to know that at least one true heir exists to forestall the curtain’s fall on their rough and raucous style. Guitarist Duwayne Burnside, son of indie-blues deity R.L. Burnside, plays with an edge and a fire…
Bombs & Bikinis
If the Navy is looking for splashy recruiting tools, it could do worse than Stealth, a zillion-dollar action movie stuffed with futuristic jet fighters, glamorous carrier pilots, and an overload of explosive, mostly digital derring-do. Here is Top Gun, revised and updated, complete with a new array of enemies — swarthy Middle Eastern terrorists, nervous…
Bobby Rush and his Exotic Shake Dancers
Just as rare as wizened blues masters these days are the old-school R&B performers who worked the chitlin’ circuit and its northern inner-city equivalents. We’re talking about folks like Clarence Carter, Denise LaSalle, and Millie Jackson — classic R&B and soul performers who knew how to entertain and titillate. Their songs frequently developed into routines…
Happy Surprise
If for no other reason, Happy Endings deserves a soft spot in our collective hearts for rescuing Tom Arnold from the where-are-they-now? scrap heap. The former Mr. Roseanne Barr plays Frank, a widower who falls for and sleeps with his son’s conniving, would-be girlfriend Jude, played by Maggie Gyllenhaal. And though he’s a bit player…
Israel Vibration
The members of Israel Vibration first met as children at a rehabilitation center for polio victims in Jamaica, where they were essentially homeless before being advanced some money in support of their first single in 1976. Powered by the release of the full-length masterpiece The Same Song the following year, the group went on to…
Steel Wheels
“Hit me,” says Mark Zupan — begs, actually, like a kid clamoring for a new toy. “I’ll hit you back.” He means it too, and his ripped pecs, buzzed scalp, tattooed back and arms, and bushy gangster-goatee promise just as much menace. The dude’s bad and doesn’t need to say shit for you to take…
Scout Niblett
Although she courts an air of mystery as willfully as any indie-rock vixen, the strangest thing about Scout Niblett is her name. Her parents mellifluously dubbed their child Emma Louise, but she adopted Scout as a tribute to the little girl in To Kill a Mockingbird. Yet despite this and other tendencies toward the mental…
Dream Killer
Shantell Stevenson thinks she would have learned more by skipping 10th grade. She started the year at Shaw High in East Cleveland. “Which was terrible,” she says. “I wasn’t learning anything.” Friends told her about The International Preparatory School (TIPS), a privately run charter school. When she met with school officials, they boasted of rigorous…
The Hills are Alive and Well
There are few Broadway musicals quite so easy to love — or hate — as The Sound of Music. Some who compulsively adore this classic have seen the play or movie upward of 100 times, while detractors scoff at the starry-eyed romance of an ex-naval officer and an ex-nun as sugary brain rot, dubbing it…
The Red Chord
Given that the man-to-monkey transformation took millions of years, it’s amazing how far hardcore has evolved in the two decades since the Gorilla Biscuits. Like ’50s rock, early-’80s hardcore is so building-block basic that many contemporary bands dismiss it as antiquated. Groups salvage aspects of the classic sound, but they seldom revisit entire old-school song…
Broken Home
The dream house was almost a reality. The exterior was finished. The interior was drywalled and ready for paint. Cabinets, flooring, and trim had been ordered. It was October 2002, and Austin and Debbie Young hoped to spend the winter nestled with their four children in their new home. For a family used to living…
On Stage
Aida — Back in 1998, the folks at Disney Theatrical Productions thought it would be dandy to update Giuseppe Verdi’s tale of doomed love and handed it off to rocker Elton John and his librettist, Tim Rice, to conjure their pop-music magic. The result is a bubblegum version that shares little more than three vowels…
Mudvayne
Every summer, a few of the bands on the Ozzfest tour decide that they’re just not reaching enough people and embark on a series of off-day shows. This year, with the main-stage/second-stage lineup ridiculously strong, off-day tours like this one are equally worthwhile. Mudvayne’s first three albums charted a fascinating journey from jagged, technical rapcore…
Payback Time
Everything must go: I read your article so intently, I doubt that an anvil hitting me could have broken my focus [“City for Sale,” July 20]. I have to say thank you! I have been waiting for years for White to get his ass slung up, along with those around him. I have been waiting…
On View
NEW Flora and Fauna — With this one-room show, Michigan-based, Cleveland-trained artist Mary Savage makes a perennially important observation: that human beings are quite as diverse as plants and animals. What’s more, she makes her point subtly and creatively. Her medium is enamel — painting on metal — an art form with a long history…
Coco
Thursday nights at Bacchus Club Internationale (formerly Hydra) are a flash point for the city’s swelling international scene. Held weekly, Coco starts off slow with Caribbean dance lessons, and then heats up as DJ Stompin’ Charleston Okafor (of WCSB-FM 89.3 fame) spins Afrobeat, reggae, calypso, reggaeton, and more. Come dressed to impress, but be prepared…
