Gangs of Fun
Believe it or not, gambling in the United States was once against the law almost everywhere. This was before our elected representatives decided that the easiest way to overtax the poor would be to run sucker bets – the lotteries — where the (state)house pockets a guaranteed percentage and the saps are left with empty…
The Clarks
The Clarks’ career took off when, by all rights, it should have sputtered and died. Songs like “Cigarette,” a Rust Belt-specific salute to big hair and smoking, made the band the kings of Pittsburgh in the early ’90s. They followed the path of such earlier ‘Burghers as Donnie Iris and the Iron City Houserockers, signing…
Jailhouse Crock
Six years ago, Joyce Bender, a moon-faced mother of two young boys, was working an assembly line, wiring welding equipment. Layoffs always loomed. Then a cousin told her about the good pay and benefits to be had as a guard at Lorain Correctional. Bender took the job, but soon after realized there were unwanted auxiliary…
Love, Death, Etc.
As children grow up, all their stories end with the phrase “And they lived happily ever after.” Among the many lies we tell kids, this is perhaps the most egregious and the most necessary because, not to put too fine a point on it, there are only two ways any real human stories end: With…
Atomic Bitchwax
The Atomic Bitchwax emerged while its once-brilliant parent band, Monster Magnet, was beginning a slow and seemingly unstoppable downward slide. Guitarist Ed Mundell was a psychedelic warlord who loved to jam even more than his boss, Dave Wyndorf, loved to posture in leather pants. Thus, the group often forswore vocals entirely, preferring to boogie out…
Dr. Narcissus
John Wilson never did anything halfway, including destroying his own career. In the 1970s, he was among the first to recognize the ongoing nightmare in which many Vietnam veterans lived. His work at Cleveland State University forever changed the way psychology treated veterans. He went on to care for patients involved in major disasters, train…
Stringfellow’s Quartet
SUN 8/1 On his new album, Soft Commands, Posies frontman Ken Stringfellow has finally owned up to his destiny. The title, he says, states as much. “Generally, my approach to music is on the gentle side,” he says. “But sometimes, something that is softer commands your attention. It draws you in.” And “I’m making a…
John Mayer
What’s more alluring than a handsome young adult-contemp singer-songwriter dude? A handsome young adult-contemp singer-songwriter dude who pens a scathingly hilarious pop-music column in Esquire. The multiplatinum-selling John Mayer knows his way around a guitar. But his whole scruffy-yet-cute thing will get old eventually, and he’ll be relegated to the clogged sidelines of music history.…
Promises, Promises
John Kerry, George Bush, and their assorted yes-men have been promising to improve the lives of Clevelanders. But while factories close and wages sink, only one select group seems to be benefiting from their blather: TV-station owners. According to advertising logs, WKYC Channel 3 has proved the biggest winner in the presidential sweepstakes. The Kerry/Edwards…
On Stage
Miss Saigon — Essentially a transcultural love story set in 1975, Miss Saigon focuses on a naive Asian bar girl who is romanced and knocked up by a depressed American serviceman. The show revels in contrasts, playing the delicacy of the young couple’s affection against the rampant sleaze of prostitution and corruption. While the music…
Pete Rock
Confirming that you never know just what you’re going to get on a package tour, this grouping contains one authentic hip-hop legend (producer Pete Rock, who helped define the genre’s early ’90s Golden Age), one one-hit wonder (singer Truth Hurts, the former Dr. Dre protégé whose 2002 solo debut included “Addictive,” a song that helped…
PD Blues
It was all very weird. Reporters reserved a room at Plain Dealer headquarters for a lunchtime meeting with emissaries from the Beacon Journal. They arrived to hear news from Akron, where a strike loomed in the wake of acrid contract talks. Employees commonly booked rooms at The PD’s sleek new offices. These are places for…
On View
Capturing Cleveland: Pages From a City Sketchbook — The 200-plus works in various media by 21 Cleveland Institute of Art students all portray Cleveland scenery. Although their subjects are easily recognizable, providing opportunities to reminisce, most of the works are mere surface studies, lacking tangible mood and depth. Among the exceptions are Sarah Laing’s digital…
The Ponys
Indie imprint In the Red has long been a haven for forward-looking garage bands too abrasive to receive invites to trendy parties. Recent signings, though, have been cool but similar variations on swampy blues punk. So the Ponys are a breath of fresh air. While they’re a surging, bashing reanimation of dark, early ’80s pop…
Punk With a Gun
Punk With a Gun Murderer of mother-raper not a nice guy: Timothy Holt is anything but a tough guy from the West Side [“In Hot Blood,” June 23]. He was a dope seller and often beat up smaller boys — with or without a weapon. For you to call him a victim is at the…
Hot Stuff
One of the hottest international concepts in dining, the Brazilian-style churrascaria, is finally coming to downtown at Brasa Grill Brazilian Steakhouse (1300 W. Ninth Street, 216-575-0699). While several area restaurants, including Lure Bistro in Willoughby and Sergio’s in University Circle, have dabbled from time to time in churrasco — the gaucho version of barbecue –…
Rilo Kiley
In a sense, More Adventurous is what Rilo Kiley has been building toward since the rickety country licks of 2001’s Take Offs and Landings and the sugar-spun indie-pop heartbreak of 2002’s The Execution of All Things. The L.A. band’s first disc on its own imprint is a startling modernization of torch and twang — amped…
See Kid Run. Run, Kid, Run!
On the plane trip to the International Children’s Games in Greece last summer, Alex Hosner of Canton could recite his tennis pro’s tip sheet on backhands and forehands backward and forward. The 14-year-old Jackson High School sophomore was ranked one of the best players his age in the Midwest. But nobody told Hosner his strongest…
Aurora Bistro Wows Us
Combine one lively young chef, one country-clubbing community, and one pint-sized, family-run business in the historic center of town . . . and a savvy diner could be excused for expecting a culinary disaster. So even as we directed our strappy little sandals up the charmingly landscaped sidewalk leading to Christopher’s Aurora Bistro, we had…
Terror Squad
The first Terror Squad album was one of those superstar side projects that seemed unlikely ever to demand a sequel. Built around the core of the late Big Punisher and his mentor, Fat Joe, the collection generously, if unwisely, turned the spotlight on a quartet of unknown Big Apple rappers, whose routine thug ‘n’ drug…
This Week’s Day-By-Day Picks
Thursday, July 29 Although it was put together after creator Jonathan Larson died, Tick, Tick . . . Boom! has all the hallmarks of his Rent, says Victoria Bussert, director of Cain Park’s production of the musical bio. “It’s truly a piece written from the heart,” she says. The story is about a struggling artist…
Wild Mood Swings
When Robert Smith commissioned his nieces and nephews to scribble the artwork for the Cure’s new self-titled album, he had three simple requests for them: Draw a good dream, draw a bad dream, and make sure to include the words “The Cure.” The results resemble the scrawled refrigerator art parents lovingly magnet above the grocery…
Dillinger Escape Plan
This album has taken so long to arrive that expectation has probably curdled into cynicism in some quarters. Rumor had it that Miss Machine was to be an attempt at a glossy sellout. Others predicted a lame rehashing of Calculating Infinity. Either way, suckage was the prognosis. Well, the only thing that sucks about Miss…
Electile Dysfunction
Just when you thought no one could top Michael Moore’s cinematic skewering of the Bush administration, along comes an armor-piercing political salvo from the country’s most prolific and outspoken porn king. Hustler founder Larry Flynt — the self-christened “smut peddler who cares” — is blanketing the country in support of Sex, Lies & Politics: The…
Emvisible
“I have to let the world know that if it wasn’t for D12, there wouldn’t be a Slim Shady,” says Swift of his infamous D12 cohort Eminem. “The name ‘Slim Shady’ stems from the creation of D12, and that’s what he introduced to the world in ‘Hi, My Name Is . . .’ That’s just…
They Might Be Giants
When silly is your MO, the line between self-parody and business as usual is exceptionally thin. They Might Be Giants has had ample opportunity to explore both sides of that divide. In nearly 20 years of remarkably consistent recording and performing, it’s become the riot-nrrd AC/DC. A streak of early classics reached its apex with…
Crime Plays
FRI 7/30 There’s plenty of ghastly wrongdoing in Cleveland’s past. And Chuck Gove, owner of Haunted Cleveland, wants to show you some of them. His latest venture, Homicide Cleveland Style, takes folks on a tour of some of the city’s most gruesome crime scenes. “It’s not just entertainment,” he says. “You learn a little bit…
Sunshine Over Canton
When Michael Shepard sings, even broken legs sound beautiful. His is a boyish lilt that could float on water. At times, the Lovedrug frontman’s voice quivers like a toddler’s upper lip; at others, it sounds like a daydream becoming a nightmare. Shepard is the entry point to Lovedrug’s pretty, progressive pop. Backed by steel-wool guitar…
Torrio
If Torrio submitted a urine specimen, it might not test positive for THC, but it would definitely reveal unhealthy levels of Eminem. The Cleveland rhymer-producer starts his third full-length with “I Hate U,” invoking both Mr. Mathers and the Wu-Tang Clan with spittin’-mad lyrics and escalating piano loops. Spitboxing champion Suave Gotti lends some polish…
Balls and Breasts
SAT 7/31 After he became a father three years ago, Tom Wolf decided it was time to put away the makeup he wore as a bull-fighting rodeo clown. Now an accountant, he’s found a safer way to play outdoors at the Hall of Fame 10s Rugby Tournament and Ruggerfest. “It looked like a lot of…
Side Stage, All the Rage
The strength of the area music scene was underscored by the bands that took the main stage at Scene Pavilion for last week’s Cleveland Music Awards. No, none of them were actually from here — the hometown acts were relegated to a small side stage. But in comparison to the nü-metal has-beens and never-weres who…
Lucky Pierre
Lucky Pierre, Kevin McMahon’s nicer face, surfaces hard and brilliant two years after Prick’s The Wreckard, his jagged, tormented return to form. Pierre and Prick live in McMahon’s head, expressing different parts of a personality that is tangled indeed. Fame burned McMahon in the ’90s, when he recorded as Prick for Trent Reznor’s Nothing label…
Go, Figure
FRI 7/30 Mary Zaller’s guests will be doing a lot of double takes at Friday’s Blue Moon Over the Garden of Good & Evil. While patrons feast on a gourmet dinner, a cast of Cleveland Public Theatre actors will throw a spooky twist into everyone’s martini. “Our guests will have to be careful, [because] some…
Disengage Stays Local
After months of waiting on major labels and more than a few bad offers, Cleveland rockers Disengage have signed on with Mushroomhead singer J. Mann’s Fractured Transmitter Records for the U.S. release of their latest album, Application for an Afterlife. “We don’t really fit into the niches that major labels are looking for,” says drummer…
Head Trip
Perhaps the most unlikely thing to capture on film is the creative process — the spinning of gears, the tripping of wires, the breaking of hearts, and the snapping of tempers that go into the making of art. Movies about writers and painters and musicians seldom collapse the barrier between inspiration and the creation itself;…
American Idols Live
Apparently people can’t get enough of Fox TV’s American Idol. After soaking in it for a few months a year, hardcore fans crave a hearty fix before the new season begins. For those tortured souls, the producers were kind enough to create American Idols Live, a coast-to-coast revue featuring the show’s top 10 finalists of…
Summer Camp
Jonathan Demme’s gutsy The Manchurian Candidate, which dares to rear its head just as the Democratic National Convention convenes in Boston, is the anti-Bush-administration movie for those who refuse to see Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 or Robert Greenwald’s Outfoxed because, well, they just ain’t Right. It’s less a remake of director John Frankenheimer’s 1962 original,…
Breathless
Back in 1978, Breathless had all the makings of a successful rock band. It was the first group that guitarist-songwriter-vocalist Jonah Koslen formed after leaving Cleveland’s beloved Michael Stanley Band, thus giving it an immediate and enthusiastic fan base. So it wasn’t surprising that the group’s self-titled debut got heavy airplay on WMMS, arguably the…
A Gift to Grief
The opening moments of The Door in the Floor are not promising. A little girl stands on a chair in a hallway of photos, pointing at the images and speaking about them. Soon, she is joined by a middle-aged man, probably her father, who takes her on a tour through the photos, helping her to…
Albert Cummings
Guitar disciples of Stevie Ray Vaughan can be found in large numbers. One who can boast the late guitar legend’s own rhythm section as admirers and colleagues is another matter. Quite likely it was Albert Cummings’s individuality as much as the SRV influence that grabbed the ears of Double Trouble partners Tommy Shannon and Chris…
Thunder Rolls
If you’re, oh, 11 years old, and you’ve had it up to here with Spider-Man’s current case of existential angst, it’s time to blow your weekly allowance on Thunderbirds. This special-effects-crammed action blockbuster aims a bit lower, agewise, which is to say that its hyperactive young hero wears a retainer on his teeth and feels…
Little Richard
To say that Little Richard is in his twilight years is a little off, unless your idea of “twilight” is crammed with dance parties. Sure, the real King of Rock and Roll doesn’t record much anymore (a track on a 2002 Johnny Cash tribute CD is about it for the last few years), and his…
