Wisdom From the Runway
What constitutes strip-club “research”? Having spent 12 years in the mental health field and 5 years as a dancer, I feel more than qualified to speak about human behavior and the culture of strip clubs [“Attack of the Puritans,” May 29]. I struggle to see the danger in these establishments and can’t begin to see…
The Vines
It took the Vines all of 94 seconds to get the Brits in bed. That’s the length their debut single, “Highly Evolved,” clocks in at, and that little jolt of prickly, radiated pop was enough to cause the U.K. mag NME to declare the Vines “the best band since Nirvana.” Such a comparison is apt,…
Who’s Your Daddy?
If, for reasons that involve narcotics or severe head trauma, you still believe state government is working for you, visit the courtroom of Judge Peggy Foley Jones on July 17. There you will witness a case between the City of Cleveland, which needs no introduction, and the American Financial Services Association, a group composed of…
Kenny Chesney
The O Brother, Where Art Thou soundtrack is the most astounding country chart-topper since Garth Brooks hid his fern-bar roots with cowboy boots in the early ’90s. Alan Jackson’s Drive is a throwback to the earnest, manly songs of the neotraditional cowboys who reigned before Garth. And Kenny Chesney’s seventh album, which has been battling…
Cosmetic Appeal
When Dott Schneider wants to enhance her artwork, she grabs a tube of lipstick and a packet of hair dye and makes fun of — and has fun with — makeup. Schneider, a French-trained abstract impressionist who’s used her orange-dyed pigtails as paintbrushes, conceived 1300 Gallery’s Throwing Shade, a five-artist, 40-piece “visualtorial.” It’s a tongue-in-cheek…
Bounty Killer
Reggae music has always been schizophrenic. People familiar with the more celebrated work of Bob Marley tend to associate reggae with peace and cultural expression. The gun-wielding, ratchet-carrying “Rude Boy,” however, has been a popular theme in Jamaican music since the mid-’60s. Embodying this duality is the new two-CD set from Bounty Killer, a Jamaican…
Pieces of Jewel
You probably heard that Jewel fell off a horse recently. The singer-songwriter was hanging out at her rodeo-star boyfriend’s ranch and took a header to the ground. She broke her collarbone and a rib, and had to cancel a few of the European dates of her current tour in support of This Way, itself a…
Halford
This is Rob Halford’s second studio album with the band he named after himself, and it’s a damn fine hunk o’ metal. He’s abandoned the industrial pretensions of Two and reined in Fight’s more thrashy leanings. The songs here boast soaring riffs and powerful, anthemic choruses; the two guitarists are technically excellent; and the drums…
Bet on Black
Like a Jawbreaker that changes color every few seconds that you suck it, MIIB: Men in Black II delivers a quick buzz, lots of stuff to look at, and a totally non-nutritious joy that can only be attained with the aid of artificial flavorings and Yellow #5. In a nutshell, it’s the perfect summer blockbuster.…
Various Artists
Once a hotbed of quality underground hip-hop, N.Y.C.’s Rawkus Records has fallen on hard times, dogged by distribution problems, chronically delayed albums, and disgruntled artists. With the chips stacked against it, the once-mighty team hopes to salvage its rep with the third edition in its critically acclaimed Soundbombing series. Per usual, collaborations are the name…
Kicking Lasses
In her recent book, Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls, Rachel Simmons hits a very topical nail squarely on its very sore head. Coining the term “relational aggression,” she employs several case studies to buttress the theory that modern girls are extremely angry, but trained to be unnaturally nice, with the…
Ras T. Dubflex
Though Ohio is far removed from Jamaica, whose thriving music scene works overtime to flood the market with hundreds of freshly recorded 7-inch singles each month, Cleveland should not be dismissed as a backwater reggae town. Reggae has always been popular here, and though our local reggae musicians aren’t earning much attention around the country,…
Ice Ice Maybe
They stream in and out, all day and all night, one after the other: band members, producers, business associates, friends, family, strangers, hangers-on who stare at the familiar face made infamous long ago. The tour bus, this parked sanctuary where he can roll his joints and drink his bottled Starbucks frappucinos and watch his motocross…
Two for the Road
Longtime area theatergoers will remember when Berea Summer Theatre was a cherished West Side institution. This temple to frivolity was where Godspell first “prepared ye the way of the Lord” and battalions of Aunt Ellers, Dolly Levis, and Harold Hills danced and sang. And this is where patrons could always count on the preshow appearance…
Sticking to the Ribs
If there’s a better place than the enclosed courtyard at Meximilian’s to swill a Corona, suck on some bones, or work your way through a loaded tortilla, you just may have to leave the state to find it. Sure, it helps if the weather cooperates, as it did during a recent Sedona-style Saturday evening, when…
In Vivo? Not Yet
Menus change, and chefs come and go, but there’s one thing you can count on in this business: No place ever opens when it’s supposed to. This ancillary to Murphy’s Law has been at work again, this time at Vivo, Chicagoan Dan Krasny’s much-anticipated restaurant in the Arcade, which was originally expected to open in…
Love Them Tender
“Are you calling us women?” Get Up Kids guitarist and vocalist Jim Suptic asks, cutting to the heart of the conversation’s theme. It’s an accusation that’s been on the lips of rock’s macho defenders for years. Though these Kansas City youths can kick out the jams with abandon, their punky rush has always been undercut…
Bluegrass Breakout
No one seems to drive a wedge between film critics like the Coen brothers. O Brother, Where Art Thou? — the big score last year for the quirky siblings, Joel and Ethan — has been labeled disjointed, pandering, cliché-ridden, and lowbrow by those reviewers not enamored of the Coens’ unorthodox irreverence. But even the harshest…
Cash on Delivery
Only the glasses give him away. Standing in the kitchen of his rural Wellington home, Terry Lee Goffee is the spitting image of one of country music’s most revered icons. “Hello, my name is Johnny Cash,” Goffee says, his deep Southern inflection eerily approximating The Man in Black’s burlap, world-weary timbre. “I sung for murderers…
Red Light District
It’s 7:40 a.m. on the corner of Lorain and West 53rd. Birds are chirping, children are pedaling their bikes, and Fleetwood the pimp is macking. “Yo, what’s up? I trick bitches. That’s my girl,” he says, pointing to a frumpy 19-year-old who calls herself Babydoll. To feed her crack habit, Babydoll has been selling her…
High on Fire
High on Fire, at its best, is better than Sleep. In stoner metal, that’s sacrilege, but it’s the truth. Former Sleep guitarist Matt Pike, freed up to do his own thing, has discovered new subterranean realms in this ferocious power trio. On HOF’s two CDs, 2000’s The Art of Self Defense (Man’s Ruin) and the…
Freeze, Grandpa!
One afternoon last November, a stricken Len Barker walked in the door and told his wife, Eva, that her parents were last seen speeding away from gunshots. A subcontractor working for the former Indians pitcher had called him with a hazy report about a shooting. When Len told Eva, she dialed her parents’ cell phones.…
Bratmobile
A couple of the smartest tunes on Bratmobile’s third full-length, Girls Get Busy, lambaste George Dubya’s war on terrorism and his campaign to sway the public. On “Shop for America,” singer Allison Wolfe proffers the peppy ironic anthem “Kids in America shop for America,” while on “United We Don’t” she roars with characteristic candor, “We…
Bless Me Father
Mary Lou Vasitas balances a thick black scrapbook on her lap. She cannot keep her emotions nearly so steady. They rise and fall with each turn of the page, heaving unchecked as she remembers her son, Father Don Rooney. Snapshots of him presiding over his first Mass in 1979 bring a proud mother’s smile. “He…
Wayne Kramer
Wayne Kramer is now 50-plus, but when we saw the former MC5 guitarist at a speaking engagement a few years back, he was still buff, impassioned, articulate, profoundly macho, and profoundly committed to his leftist politics. In short, he was Henry Rollins with a better reason to live. True, Rollins has lately been known to…
