CMA screens rare Joan Baez documentary
Originally released in 1970, Carry It On is an obscure documentary about Joan Baez and then-husband, activist David Harris, who went to jail for dodging the draft. It screens at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 5 at the Cleveland Museum of Art Lecture Hall. Here’s our review of the film. Carry It On (US, 1970) Arrested…
Moments in Irony
By now you probably not only know that the NBA’s complete schedule is out, but all the fun details of the Cavs’ 2009-2010 campaign. Boston to open the season, Lakers for Christmas, Orlando is the last game. What’s more interesting is that three teams, including the Cavs, were fined for leaking details of their schedules…
eBay Item of the Day: 1997 Indians Caricature Tee
How appropriate after a week that saw the Indians trade Cliff Lee and Victor Martinez. While it’s no 1995, this 1997 t-shirt is a sad reminder of just how far the last 12 years has taken the Tribe. Sure, it was just a mere two years ago that the Indians were one game away from…
This Just In: Concert Announcements
This week, we have 43 new shows, including a Roger Daltrey small-venue solo tour, the Alternative Press Tour, confirmed details on Leonard Cohen, every ska band who’s anybody at Ska Is Dead IV and plenty more — from (The) Academy Is to Ziv. —D.X. Ferris CANCELEDMike Birbiglia: Fri., Oct. 2. Lorain Palace Theater. THIS JUST…
New Shaq Fathead
New to the Cleveland Fathead family, the Shaq….
Photo Show: Mayhem Fest at Blossom Music Center
Johnny Angell didn’t go to work on Friday. Instead he spent the day shooting Mayhem Fest at Blossom.
A Not-So-Hastily-Made Cleveland Tourism Video
Smart-ass comedian/filmmaer Mike Polk, maker of the “Hastily Made Cleveland Tourism Video” that got national attention on the Net, now has even more competition. Positively Cleveland has just launched a new tourism video to highlight its “Discover the unexpected side of Cleveland” campaign. The locally based Glazen Creative Studios put together a high-def video that…
Lake County Nickel Beer Redux
The Lake County Captains hosted nickel beer night last night, which I might have tried to attend if I knew about it before hand. Hell, I didn’t even hear about it afterward, which basically means it was a failure. Sure, one could claim no arrests or serious fights or injuries or suspension of the game…
I Don’t Even Chew Gum and I Agree
Tweet of the day, courtesy DaniCharlie: “kinda blown that no1 seems to sell Lebron James Lightning Lemonade Bubblicious Bubble gum anymore, It’s my fav.”
One Last Sad Victor Memory
The audio quality is beyond poor, but this is Vic and CC talking to the crowd after clinching the AL Central in 2007.
Monday Music News Roundup
(* Powered by insipid snark and tired jokes.) Chris Brown makes an onstage appearance without Rihanna at the end of his fist. Michael Jackson’s mom gets custody of his kids. Presumably because she contains 50 percent less batshit-crazy than the rest of the family. Michael Jackson’s doctor kept his drugs in a storage unit. Couldn’t…
eBay Item of the Day: “Game Worn” 1960’s Indians Stirrups
I put “Game worn” in quotes because the eBay listing isn’t too specific. Here’s what the seller wrote: “THIS AUCTION IS FOR A SCARCE PAIR OF 1960’S CLEVELAND INDIANS MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL GAME WORN/USED STIRRUP SOCKS. ORIGINALLY PURCHASED AS PART OF A COMPLETE 1960’S CLEVELAND INDIANS GAME WORN FLANNEL UNIFORM.” Naturally, if he/she listed a…
Filmmakers Looking for Songs to Accompany Dismemberment Scenes
Attention torture-porn fans who also happen to play music: The producers of Saw 6 (yes, apparently they have made that many sequels) are looking for some kick-ass tunes to go on the movie’s soundtrack. The movie comes out on October 23. The soundtrack releases on October 20. Says the folks putting together the album: “We…
Onion report: “LeBron James Claims Smoking Marijuana In High School Gave Him Idea To Go Pro”
Comedy newspaper The Onion has a new report of a presumably fake excerpt from LeBron James’ upcoming book, in which James confesses becoming an NBA pro was the result of a high-school smoke session. Inthe article, the king recalls,”I was like, ‘Wouldn’t it be crazy if your job was to play in the NBA?… I…
Money Where Your Mouth Is: The Greatest Hits
This is the part of C-Notes where we let the musicians do the talking and explain why you need to see them live. This session: Seattle’s flashy and trashy rockers the Greatest Hits. Band: The Greatest Hits Website: myspace.com/thegreatesthitsmusic Hometown: Seattle Sounds Like: “The Ramones meets the Sweet meets the Beach Boys. We call it…
Concert Review: Mayhem Fest at Blossom
The summer sun set on Blossom Music Center on Friday, calling the end to a humid day filled with some of the most intriguingly heavy and hard-as-fuck music being made today. Slayer prepped the already massive Mayhem Fest crowd for co-headliner Marilyn Manson, who took the stage for a sea of fist-pumping and cut-off T-shirts.…
8/5: Candye Kane at Beachland
Blues belter Candye Kane has fought many battles in her life. Growing up on the poor side of Los Angeles, she became a teenage mom and then a skin-mag pinup before turning to her true love of music. “The Toughest Girl Alive” (to borrow an album title) also has combated prejudices and perceptions (like sexism…
8/5: The Low Anthem at Grog Shop
The Low Anthem are a less kind, less gentle Fleet Foxes. Or maybe a rowdier Bon Iver. On their second album, Oh My God, Charlie Darwin, the Rhode Island trio stray from their dusty Americana trail from time to time, stopping for drunken singalongs and wall-rattling rave-ups. Like the Foxes’ and Iver’s breakthroughs from last…
8/4: Cleveland International Piano Competition Semi Finals
Eight musicians have advanced in the Cleveland International Piano Competition to play hour-long recitals in the semi finals, which start today. Their programs must include something by a French impressionist composer, something by a romantic composer and a third work of whatever style or age they want. Performances are at 1 and 7 p.m. today…
8/4: Trevor Hall at HOB
That old saying about youth being wasted on the young has no bearing on Trevor Hall. The South Carolinian started playing and writing music early on: For his 15th birthday, Hall’s father gave him time in his friend’s recording studio, which resulted in Hall’s first album. The following year, Hall attended L.A.’s Idyllwild School for…
8/3: Fear Before at Peabody’s
The band previously known as Fear Before the March of Flames released its self-titled, fourth album last year. They not only dropped part of their name, they lost two members too. The quartet continue their redefinition onstage, translating the raucous, thrashing songs off their latest album into an equally energetic live show. The group has…
8/3: Curtis Salgado at the Wincester
When John Belushi formed the Blues Brothers, he was inspired by Oregon-based singer Curtis Salgado, whom the actor befriended during the making of National Lampoon’s Animal House. Belushi even dedicated the Blues Brothers’ debut, Briefcase Full of Blues, to Selgado. The dude has a long history as bandleader and sideman. Early on, he sang with…
Slayer at Blossom, on Classic Metal Show, plus Manson, Mushroomhead
Slayer headlines the Rockstar Mayhem Festival at Blossom tonight (doors 2:15 p.m., Tickets: $25-$49.50). Canton’s Marilyn Manson (check your yearbook for Brian Warner) co-headlines. Mushroomhead is playing this show and two other Midwest dates. And you’re a damned fool if you don’t show up early for Behemoth’s set; the black/death metalers will leave bruises all…
Skeletonwitch Unveils Gnarly New Album Cover
Skeletonwitch — the death/thrash metal band that called Cleveland home briefly — have almost finished recording their second full-length LP, Breathing the Fire. It won’t be out until October 13, but they’ve just revealed its wicked new artwork by Andrei Bouzikov, who also created the grisly new Municipal Waste cover. The Cleveland alums are working…
8/2: Anal Cunt at Grog Shop
As long as there are people who believe in decency and political correctness, there will be bands like Anal Cunt to make fun of them. Massachusetts’ infamous all-nonsense hardcore group has been alienating listeners for more than 20 years, despite numerous lineup changes, many breakups and one coma. For the uninitiated, here’s a simple guide…
8/2: Cleveland Orchestra and Kent/Blossom Chamber Orchestra
Two conductors, two orchestras, two intermissions and two symphonies mark a marathon program for the Cleveland Orchestra tonight. The orchestra’s assistant conductor Tito Muñoz warms up the crowd by leading the Kent/Blossom Chamber Orchestra in Schoenberg’s arrangement of Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun and Felix Mendelssohn’s Italian Symphony. After the first intermission,…
8/2: The Horse’s Ha at Beachland
While many recent additions to the world of folk music think that all you need to be Americana is an acoustic guitar and a bottle of whiskey, the Horse’s Ha create more nuanced and soothing takes on backwoods traditions. The band’s latest album, Of the Cathmawr Yards, offers the sort of wispy, mournful dirges and…
Judd Apatow raises the stakes with Funny People
Funny People is intended to be Judd Apatow’s sophisticated comedy, the one where he grows out of dick jokes and makes a multifaceted movie about real people and real issues (not that 40-year-old virgins and one-night-stands that result in knocked-up women aren’t real issues). And in a way, it is a very grown-up movie. But…
Joked Up
Funny People is intended to be Judd Apatow’s sophisticated comedy, the one where he grows out of dick jokes and makes a multifaceted movie about real people and real issues (not that 40-year-old virgins and one-night-stands that result in knocked-up women aren’t real issues). And in a way, it is a very grown-up movie. But…
BOEHNER: OBAMA COMING FOR YOUR NANA
When Senator Voinovich goofed on the southerners who are destroying his party, we argued that the GOP’s problem isn’t geographical, but rather pathological: Republicans everywhere have been so wild-eyed and shrill for so long that they’ve forgotten how to speak in non-histrionic tones. And right on cue, Voinovich’s colleague from Ohio, Congressman John Boehner, stepped…
Cleaning Up Elvis’ Last Great Album
Ernst Mikael Jørgensen knows his Elvis Presley history. He can tell you about the quality of the home recording of “Baby What You Want Me To Do.” He can explain why “America the Beautiful” was erased from the Graceland sessions and speculate on the likelihood of previously unreleased Sun Studios material ever seeing the light…
Prog-Rockers Syzygy Return With a New Prog-Rock-Titled CD
Local prog-rockers Syzygy celebrate the release of their new album, Realms of Eternity, with a show at the Beachland Ballroom at 8 p.m. Saturday. The group released its first album, Cosmos and Chaos, as Witsend in the early ’90s. After a lengthy hiatus, they returned with a name change and a new album, The Allegory…
Photo Show: Dave Matthews Band at Blossom, 7/29
What wouid you say if we told you Johnny Angell went to see the Dave Matthews Band last night and brought his camera?
Thursday Music News Roundup
Looks like maybe Kayne’s an ass man. Michael Jackson’s mom gets his kids. Because her own children turned out OK. Wanna know what Michael Jackson ate the day he died? You’re in luck. Michael Jackson’s batshit-crazy dad still talking batshit-crazy stuff. Someone leaked Madonna’s new song. Meanwhile, the rest of the world yawns. Who can…
ABORTION POLITICS: CRAZY AS EVER
Thrice-married admitted porn addict Phil Burress of Cincinnati’s Citizens for Community Values (“Policing Ohio’s Bedrooms for More Than 25 Years”) must be working the phones again. A couple of weeks ago, state legislator John Adams (pictured), a Republican from the west-central part of Ohio, re-introduced what’s being billed as “a father’s right to choose” legislation.…
8/1: Magnolia Drive Community Festival
Three disparate institutions that share a University Circle intersection are joining to sponsor a festival for their community. Hosted by Mt. Zion UCC (10723 Magnolia Dr.), in conjunction with the Western Reserve Historical Society and the Louis Stokes V.A. Medical Center, the Magnolia Drive Community Festival takes place between 105th and 108th streets from 11…
8/1: John Legend at Nautica Pavilion
John Legend is one of the most soulless soul singers around. The 30-year-old Ohio native gets tons of props from fans and critics for bringing R&B back to its old-school roots (his music includes inspiration from the church to ’70s radio jams). Thing is, Legend’s silky-smooth baritone doesn’t have much range. He doesn’t belt out…
8/1: Downtown Lakewood pARTy
For more than 30 years, the Lakewood Arts Festival has squandered major party potential by allowing its crowd of 10,000 shoppers to dissipate at the onset of cocktail hour. People come every year to browse blown glass, ceramics, turned wood and all the other things you typically find in white vinyl festival booths. But no…
8/1: Cleveland Orchestra with James Feddeck
In addition to a gig conducting the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, David Zinman serves as music director of the Aspen Music Festival and School. He discovered James Feddeck — a student in 2006 through 2008 — there. Feddeck leads the Cleveland Orchestra in Mendelssohn’s Overture, “The Fair Melusina,” which opens tonight’s program. Zinman then takes over…
7/31: Jack Goes Boating at Sometimes in the Silence Theatre
Bob Glaudini’s play Jack Goes Boating is a gentle treatment of likeable regular people dealing with subjects that typically take the Bang and the Clatter Theatre down unsettling roads: date panic, marital meltdown and betrayal. But in this story of lower-middle class stoners, the human spirit ultimately wins out. The Bang and the Clatter opens…
7/31: I See Stars at Peabody’s
I See Stars are weird, but they’re also kinda brilliant. The underage Michigan sextet’s debut CD, 3-D, throws screamo, disco beats and a vocoder into a sonic blender and comes up with something thoroughly schizophrenic but pleasurable in a way most modern metal can’t even imagine. They even feature Cleveland hip-hop legend Bizzy Bone as…
7/31: Steve Earle at Kent Stage
Steve Earle’s debt to cult singer-songwriter Townes Van Zandt is immeasurable. Van Zandt championed Earle during his struggling-artist years, and Earle even named one of his sons after the troubled troubadour (who drank and drugged himself to death when he was 52). In a way, Earle’s entire career has been a tribute to Van Zandt…
7/30: Romeo and Juliet at Stan Hywett
There probably isn’t a more beautiful location in Northeast Ohio for outdoor theater than the lagoon at Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens (714 N. Portage Path, Akron, 330.836.5533). That’s where the Ohio Shakespeare Festival makes its summer home. It just closed As You Like It, the first of its two productions this season. At 8…
7/30: Pippin at Cain Park
Composer Stephen Schwartz was just a couple of years out of college and already had one Off-Broadway hit (Godspell) when Pippin premiered in 1972. The quasi-historical musical sets the life of Pippin the Hunchback to a score of ’70s-style pop music. It’s been a favorite of musical theaters and high schools ever since. But Cain…
Phantasy Update
Following a nearby fire earlier this month, two of Lakewood’s three Phantasy clubs remain open. Manager Michele De Frasia says the Chamber is still being cleaned and will remain closed through at least August 11. All Chamber events are taking place in the neighboring Symposium. Read on for this weekend’s adjusted schedule. Phantasy Nite Club:Fri.…
7/31: President of the United States at Grog Shop
The Presidents of the United States of America have never taken themselves all that seriously. Whether writing songs about peaches and, um, whatever “Lump” was about, the Seattle trio are a pretty lighthearted bunch. The Presidents have a special connection to Clevelanders, thanks to their cover of Ian Hunter’s “Cleveland Rocks,” which became The Drew…
Creep Show: A review of the Coraline DVD
Coraline is a stop animation film (think Rankin & Bass’s The Year without a Santa Claus or, more fittingly, Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas , which Coraline director Henry Selick also directed). Based on a book by Neil Gaiman, it’s the tale of a young girl who gets exactly what she wants and then some.…
Jehova Waitresses Reunite
Back in the late ’80s and early ’90s, the Cleveland music scene was teeming with folk-flavored pop/rock bands whose primary appeal was smart, tuneful songs and strong vocals — both lead and harmonies. If you ever run across a CD in a used-record bin on the local Sound of the Sea label, pick it up…
Concert Review: Cursive at Grog Shop, 7/29
Tim Kasher’s left lung collapsed in 2002. Not that it’s a secret, but it sure is a shock. Cursive’s 34-year-old singer and guitarist doesn’t go easy on his lungs (or any part of his body, for that matter) in a live show. His cathartic, gravelly style of singing sounds like the voice of dreams and…
Concert Review: Incubus at TWC Amphitheater, 7/29
Incubus’ concert last night filled Time Warner Cable Amphitheater with high-schoolers to aging hipsters and just about everybody in between. The band has amassed a pretty wide fan base over the years. In celebration of the recent release of their Monuments and Melodies greatest-hits CD, Incubus rolled out their most popular songs last night. While…
FISHER: I’M STILL HERE!
Looks like Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher is grasping at straws in his quest for the U.S. Senate seat left vacated by the retiring George Voinovich. Fisher unveiled his new website yesterday, and besides trumpeting his short-lived and virtually fruitless turn as state director of development, he really wants you to know that he’s raised four…
CHOOSE LIFE OR I’LL KICK YOUR ASS
Pro-choice activists are calling for a rally at an Akron abortion clinic this weekend. Earlier this month, weekly protests turned violent when a volatile and colorful crowd clashed just outside downtown, at the Akron Women’s Medical Group. July was a busy month. Regular attendees say the anti-abortion side has been unusually rambunctious and aggressive since…
Get Your Reggae Fest Tix Now, Before You Forget
In 18 years, the Mid-West Reggae Fest — the beloved creation of local reggae enthusiastic, promoter, DJ and chocolate fan Packy Malley — has grown from a single-day event to a three-day extravanganza with a lineup of some of the biggest names in the genre. The event is taking place for the third year at…
eBay Item of the Day: Browns Wedding Garter Belt
As if marrying you wasn’t going to make your bride’s parents embarrassed enough, now you go and pull this off her leg at the reception and I’m pretty sure they’re going to disown you just as soon as the mandatory “be nice” portion of the evening is over. This gem can be yours for just…
Wednesday Music News Roundup
Teen star Demi Lovato debuts at No. 1 with an album no one will be listening to six months from now. Apparently, Michael Jackson had a different doctor for every part of his body. Do you think maybe the fact that she was still in her teens when she got married has something to do…
Pearl Jam’s Internet Puzzle Game
Pearl Jam are giving fans yet another way to avoid work today. Their new album, Backspacer, includes artwork by Tom Tomorrow. The band digs it so much, it chopped the cartoon into nine pieces and scattered it across the web for fans to find and then add to an online album. You can start here.…
Relief Test
Every club deals with injuries, ineffective pitching, stopgap relievers and such through the long haul of a season. But this Tribe team is special — not in a good way. The Indians have used 20 relievers this year, ranging from the obvious to the obscure to the all-to-brief guest appearances. The question is: Can you…
Pro Football Hall of Fame Archives: Bonus Photo Show
A lot of photos and tidbits didn’t make the original story for a variety of reasons. Here’s a bunch of bonus stuff. The older helmets in the Hall’s collection. Mark Kelso’s “pro-cap” helmet, which came to the Hall via Jim Kelly, one of the biggest private collectors out there. (Many more photos after the jump.)
Photo Show: Yeah Yeah Yeahs at HOB, 7/28
Aaron Mendelsohn reviewed the Yeah Yeah Yeahs concert at House of Blues last night. He also brought along his camera and got these shots.
Ghosts of Football Past — Digging Through the Archives of the Pro Football Hall of Fame
About halfway through the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s layout — just after the exhibit that pays homage to the first century of the game and just before the solemn, reverential space that houses the inductees’ bronze busts — there’s a room. It contains no memorabilia, and it’s a little antiseptic compared to every other…
Concert Review: Yeah Yeah Yeahs at HOB, 7/28
It’s been more than five years since the last time I saw the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. On a cold February night, the frenzied trio packed the Beachland Ballroom but sounded a bit lackluster compared to their albums. And I couldn’t help but leave disappointed. Fast-forward to last night, when the YYYs packed another local venue,…
Border Crossings
Director Alex Rivera first became interested in immigration issues when he took a good look at the life of his Peruvian father. “My first film told his life story through this cracked lens, where I compared his journey from Peru to America to that of the potato,” says Rivera. “The potato is of Inca origin…
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
Lumberjacks and philosophers have been debating that whole “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” riddle for centuries. More recently, film buffs have put their own spin on George Berkeley’s theory of immaterialism, namely, “If you present contemporary arthouse patrons with their…
Erie New Wave
Mystery of Two have re-ignited Cleveland’s post-punk, avant-garage torch with their new, self-titled second album. After a blazing set at Ingenuity Fest recently, the threesome huddled in a small room nearby, sweating profusely and drinking warm beers. Singer-guitarist Ryan Weitzel discusses the album’s influences, playing with members of Pere Ubu, and running Exit Stencil Recording…
SOUNDS GOOD
Fans attending Friday’s Indians game will be treated to fireworks, as they are every Friday, but this week will be a little different. Instead of music, the pyrotechnics will be flying to a soundtrack of the dulcet tones of Tom Hamilton. In honor of Hammy’s 20th anniversary in the booth, a compilation of some of…
Film Caps as We Roll Into August
Opening Carry It On (US, 1970) Arrested by federal marshals for dodging the draft, peace activist David Harris was the rare radical who could speak eloquently about revolution and heroism. No wonder folk singer Joan Baez, his wife at the time, was drawn to him. This film documents Baez’s concert tour in the wake of…
Ghosts of Football Past
About halfway through the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s layout — just after the exhibit that pays homage to the first century of the game and just before the solemn, reverential space that houses the inductees’ bronze busts — there’s a room. It contains no memorabilia, and it’s a little antiseptic compared to every other…
Reel Cleveland: Yeah! Ohio Film Incentives!
Finally. After years of wrangling, the state has passed a film-production incentive that sets aside $10 million in tax credits for film companies making movies in Ohio in 2010. That allocation goes up for $20 million in 2011. Films with budgets of at least $300,000 qualify to receive a 25 percent tax credit, with a…
The Dork Side
TOP PICK Robot Chicken: Star Wars Episode II (Adult Swim) The second installment of Robot Chicken’s stop-motion Star Wars tribute is just as hilarious as the first (best is Attack of the Clones’ Geonosian battle reimagined as a monster-truck rally). All your favorite characters show up: Boba Fett, Darth Vader, Jar Jar. This DVD includes…
CD Review: La Coka Nostra
Significantly, La Coka Nostra’s long-time-coming full-length debut is not billed as a House of Pain reunion, even though the hip-hop supergroup features all three House members — Everlast, Danny Boy and DJ Lethal. Most of the tracks sound more like an unusually fun Cypress Hill album, thanks in part to cameos by Hill MCs B-Real…
Around Hear: Dead Even Alive One More Time
Dead Even will play a one-off reunion show at Peabody’s (2045 E. 21st St.) on Saturday, August 1. Scene readers voted the group Metal Band of the Year in 2006. The set will focus on old material like “The Joke That No One Gets” and “Ion.” Keratoma/Forged in Flames drummer Jon Vinson will play drums,…
Nightmare of You
Infomaniac must have been recorded in a studio next door to neighbors who don’t like loud music. The guitars sound like they’ve been turned down to five, drummer Michael Fleischmann’s playing is sedated and singer Brandon Reilly’s delivery is lukewarm. This is indie-pop, which allows songs like “Good Morning, Waster” and “A Pair of Blue…
HOLLOW HOLIDAY
The Disney-Cameron Mackintosh production of Mary Poppins, currently ensconced at PlayhouseSquare, carries more sleight-of-hand wizardry than the original-cast production of World War I. Yet its most uncanny special effect is the way it perpetuates the almost opiate-like illusion of being as “practically perfect” as its titular nanny. Be advised: You may have to slap some…
CD Review: YACHT
James Murphy’s latest signing have already released three albums, so unlike their labelmates, they don’t sound all that much like LCD Soundsystem. They’re also more percussion-driven and groove-minded than many of their DFA peers. Still, Yacht toil in the same too-cool-for-art-school scene and load their songs with tons of bells and whistles (literally). When they…
Strange Fruit
War as Art/Art as War, an exhibit of drawn and printed images on gray or tan pulp paper currently at the Morgan Art of Papermaking Conservatory, is an attempt to re-sensitize viewers to the daily terror and arduous realities of war. The Bush administration did what it could to keep images of death and dismemberment off…
CD Review: Delbert McClinton
Texas native Delbert McClinton honed his chops in a house band that played behind Howlin’ Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson and Jimmy Reed. He also played harmonica in the early ’60s for Bruce Channel and allegedly gave harp lessons to John Lennon. The Blues Brothers even covered McClinton’s “B Movie Boxcar Blues” on their 1978 debut.…
PUSHING BACK AGAINST DEATH
The last time Cleveland playwright and actor David Hansen took a one-man show to the New York Fringe Festival in 2004, it was with his autobiographical tale about the stillbirth of his son, I Hate This. Several people suggested at the time — much to Hansen’s irritation — that he consider a more uplifting sequel…
CD Review: Portugal. The Man
This Alaska-bred quartet have always been characterized by undulating, multi-movement compositions that make great use of snaky falsetto vocals, odd noises and swelling keyboards — sorta like a prog-rock version of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” with jagged post-punk guitar lines. They relocated to Oregon, but their music retained the mythic size and swagger of their home…
LOVE HURTS
When it comes topissed-off married chicks, there is more fury in the blushing, hatchet-wielding ladies of Big Love than in a whole season of Bridezillas. Borrowing the basic structure of The Suppliants by the ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus, Charles Mee’s Big Love looks at love and animosity in many forms. And thanks to convergence-continuum’s lusty…
CD Review: Phil and the Osophers
Phil and the Osophers, a Brooklyn threesome led by Philip Radiotes, boast a band name that initially resonates as either a good joke or lofty witticism. The group, which has released five previous albums, seems interested in exploring and questioning human existence. But in the context of jangly, quirky songs, it’s hard to hear the…
Bites: New Pan-Asian Joint Replacing La Tortilla Feliz
Bac Nguyen comes from a long line of enthusiastic Vietnamese cooks. His grandmother is the “Minh” in Minh Anh, a restaurant she founded 24 years ago. (She is no longer involved.) His mother operated the popular Chinese Village, a casual Asian eatery that survived in Lakewood for 14 years. Now it’s Bac’s turn. The Case…
CD Review: Funny People Soundtrack
Funny People writer-director Judd Apatow (The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up) takes an active role in picking the music he includes on his films’ soundtracks, so you can bet the music here matches his new movie’s mood. Since Funny People is a more serious venture about a comedian (Adam Sandler) who thinks he has a terminal…
Not the Tuscany We Remember
You can’t spell quality without Quagliata. More than a hokey maxim, this statement holds up as a concise and accurate synopsis of the Cleveland dining scene. Since opening his flagship Ristorante Giovanni’s in 1976, Carl Quagliata has established himself as the maven of good taste. Decade in and decade out, diners could be confident that…
CD Review: Angus Khan
To call this Hollywood band as a “supergroup” is misleading. For that to be true, members’ previous bands would have to be super. While acts like B-Movie Rats, the Streetwalkin’ Cheetahs, ADZ and Jesters of Destiny are all pretty cool (and certainly qualify as guilty pleasures), they’re really not super. That quibble aside, Black Leather…
A Novel Experience
Many new bands get taken advantage of by major-label sharpies when it comes time to sign on the bottom line. But the Airborne Toxic Event had a different experience with Island Records. “We didn’t have to sign our children away; we worked out a very band-friendly deal,” says singer-guitarist Mikel Jollett. “You know, when you…
TIGER HUNTING
Northeast Ohioan Bill Watterson is an enigma to even his most ardent fans. But author Nevin Martell claims to have pinned down the elusive writer-illustrator in his upcoming book Looking for Calvin and Hobbes: The Unconventional Story of Bill Watterson and His Revolutionary Comic Strip. “It’s a traditional biographical narrative, with an emerging detective story…
Methods of Mayhem
Slayer is, in many ways, the ultimate metal band. Their lyrics are about war, murder and hell; their music is relentless, mosh pit-driving and (with the exception of “Dead Skin Mask” from 1990’s Seasons in the Abyss) avoids melody like the plague. Their choruses are excuses to pump your fist and chant along, not raise…
Local CD Reviews
The Flipside (self-released) heartheflipside.com Five years ago, local singer-songwriters Beth “Flip” Hyland, Mark Ronan, Bob “Gib” Gibbons, Brian Baddour and Jack Mizenko figured they’d sound better together than apart, so they formed the Flipside and became one of the best local folk acts. Pick any song off their debut, Listen to the Heartbeat, and you’ll…
