Les Breastfeeders
Partying hard is universal. Whether you’re in Spain or Australia, people are people and parties are parties. That’s why no one really cares that Les Breastfeeders sing most of their songs in French. The Montreal quintet jumps around manically while cranking out the kind of dirty ’60s garage rock that leaves audiences reeling. It doesn’t…
Great Scott’s and Shoeless Joe’s pack movable meats for picnic feasts
Listen up, alfresco fans: A Pepsi and a can of Pringles is not a picnic. On the other hand, who wants to slave away in the kitchen on a beautiful summer’s day, just to end up stowing your culinary masterpieces in a cooler for a trek to the park? The solution, of course, is to…
Size Matters
Donna Frisch of Lakewood doesn’t see a “fat lady” when she looks in the mirror. Instead, she marvels at “a woman of distinction” as her 6-foot, 285-pound frame stares back at her. “I’ve been called every name in the book because of my size,” says Frisch, who looks forward to this weekend’s Ohio BBW Expo…
Robert Plant/Alison Krauss
Robert Plant and Alison Krauss’ Raising Sand is touted as a bluegrass album, but the collaboration between erstwhile rock god Plant and onetime fiddle-prodigy Krauss has as much to do with Bill Monroe’s kind of music as Lil Wayne’s new CD. If anything, Raising Sand is an atmospheric take on Delta blues, filtered through producer…
Tremont is sweet on Lilly Handmade Chocolates
Once upon a time, Big Apple delis named their sandwiches after famous actors. That custom is getting an update at Lilly Handmade Chocolates, the pretty Tremont sweetshop recently launched by chefs Amanda and Joshua Montague. In this case, that means naming gourmet chocolates in honor of favorite local chefs. Thus, thanks to the Montagues, you…
Bernie, Don’t Lose That Number
Top-notch Cleveland football has inspired Dana Depew to scout out the best art on his home turf for tonight’s opening reception of Asterisk Gallery’s 19 exhibit. While growing up on a Medina farm in the late ’80s, he worshiped ex-Browns QB Bernie Kosar. “He was lanky and unorthodox, but he always got the job done,”…
Keri Noble
On a cold Detroit morning, a preacher’s daughter — familiar with mostly Christian music — stumbles onto Joni Mitchell’s Blue and has a life-altering experience. It sounds like both a thousand other musical awakenings and the world’s hoariest cliché. But it’s all true: After Minneapolis singer-songwriter Keri Noble discovered Mitchell’s 1971 confessional classic when she…
Letters published July 9, 2008
“Miso Soup and Monkey Brains,” July 2 The Raw Truth Best sushi, bar none: I used to think I liked sushi. Now I love it! I’ve been to Ariyoshi six times in the past two months, and every time has been great! The sushi was always fresh and made with top-quality fish. The drinks are…
Olympic Proportions
You can try to score Tribe tickets, movie passes, and restaurant gift cards as nine-player teams compete on the streets of downtown Cleveland in today’s Thursday Night Live series of badminton, basketball, and cornhole tournaments. While the athletes huff and puff for prizes, spectators can cash in on $2 bottles of beer, $3 goblets of…
Acid Rain
Tuesday nights are probably the worst night of the week — except at the aptly named Rockstar Cleveland, where members of Ministry, Meshuggah, and VNV Nation have stopped by to check out Acid Rain, the city’s best metal-industrial-rock-rawk-punk-hardcore-goth party. As music from 1349 to 16Volt blares, live dancers clad in leather, fishnets, and (sometimes) chains…
County Prosecutor Bill Mason hits the campaign trail, balloons in hand
For the last month and a half, Punch has reported on the ever-more-suspicious business practices behind Scott Baltusnik’s Mud & Grass Volley-Dodgeball Tournament, an annual event at the Cuyahoga County Airport in Richmond Heights. First, Wendy Nelson, director of Wags4Kids, a nonprofit that provides service dogs for disabled children, filed suit against Baltusnik, claiming she…
Fine China
If you’ve seen the 2005 drama Memoirs of a Geisha, you’re familiar with the elegance of Japanese hookers. When Chinese-born Mingmei Yip yaks about her novel, Peach Blossom Pavilion, in Lyndhurst tonight, she’ll point out that the first geishas actually worked the streets 2,500 years ago in her homeland. “Geishas were called prestigious prostitutes in…
N.E.R.D.
“Her ass is a spaceship I want to ride,” sang Pharrell a few years back. And you gotta wonder if maybe the Neptunes member really does live underwater, where air doesn’t exactly get to the brain. But Clipse’s Hell Hath No Fury (which Pharrell produced) is a pretty good record — once its shards of…
Learning Curves
Get away from the daily grind tonight, when you connect with your inner self at Meditative Drawings: Mandalas in Brecksville. Used by Tibetan monks and Buddhists alike, mandalas are all about making art out of circles — like cutting one into eight pie slices and finishing the piece with simple or complex patterns. “You sit…
Funny ‘Bone
After 26 years of hopscotching from Alaska to the Caribbean and all points in between, Canton native John Rathbone has started to juggle his stand-up comedy career and songwriting. By the next football season, he hopes to drop a novelty song about the Ohio State Buckeyes. “It’s not funny funny but fun funny,” says Rathbone.…
Street Dogs
Street Dogs singer Mike McColgan was the original frontman for Celtic punks the Dropkick Murphys. Before that, he was in the Army and served during the first Gulf War. Afterward, he was a Boston firefighter. Now he’s really gone above and beyond the call of duty on his current band’s fourth album in five years.…
Record Evolution
For a band whose median age is 19, it’s a pleasant surprise that Orlando’s There for Tomorrow can compose epic choruses and chunky guitar riffs. And the quartet sets out to prove the point next month, when their self-titled EP hits music-store shelves. “With these new songs, I feel like we’ve grown as people as…
Hometown metal heroes Chimaira turn 10
Chimaira — Cleveland’s international ambassador of heavy metal — will celebrate its 10th anniversary with a special headlining gig on Saturday, July 12, at Peabody’s (2083 East 21st Street). The sextet will perform three or four songs from each of its five releases, dating back to 2000’s This Present Darkness EP. “We’re going to play…
The Fratellis
You’ve heard the Fratellis before. Maybe you’re familiar with the Scottish trio from their 2007 iPod commercial. Or maybe you know one of the dozens of other Britrock bands they sound like. On their second album, Jon, Barry, and Mince Fratelli (not real brothers) sing a bunch of songs with big, bad guitar riffs, about…
Volume Control
It might be a while before Florida’s Shinedown disappoints fans with its music. In its Cleveland concert tonight, the quintet showcases tracks off its third CD, The Sound of Madness, which spotlights the chart-climbing single “Devour.” The album also features frontman Brent Smith, waxing poetic on George Bush, the Iraq war, and autobiographical tales from…
Can an old bush-league ballplayer take Cleveland wrestling to the big time?
The Masonic temple might be Lakewood’s most beautiful building: a Grecian-style landmark overlooking Detroit Avenue, built in 1916 and sporting a facade of white limestone columns. And it hosts the appropriately grandiose traditions of the Freemasons — that male-only, not-so-secret society known for elaborate headgear, occult handshakes, and the membership of 15 American presidents. But…
Albert Hammond Jr.
The crowning moment of Hammond’s solo career is a seven-minute instrumental that shows up near the end of his second album, ¿Cómo Te Llama? “Spooky Couch” sounds nothing at all like the Strokes (the band Hammond plays guitar in) or John Lennon (Hammond’s obviously a big fan). Centered on a slow, winding guitar line, the…
This Bud’s For You
Though you likely appreciate the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo’s animals, Sue Allen suspects that you’ve probably ignored its plant life. But not after today’s ZooBlooms, where flowers, shrubs and trees take center stage in a daylong show of tours, crafts, and gardening workshops, given by the parks’ botanists and horticulturists. “Feel free to pick the brains…
RZA as Bobby Digital
Near the end of Digi Snacks, Wu-Tang mastermind RZA states, “Hip-hop is all about having fun.” And the production maestro, chess fanatic, and underrated MC indeed has a fabulous time spitting spastic, marble-mouthed verses on his fourth solo album. But soul-funk group Stone Mecca harshes RZA’s buzz with its dank instrumentals, which torpedo his madcap…
Fashion Cents
Like other professions, fashion designing has taken its share of hits in this age of out-of-control gas prices and corporate downsizing. But Cleveland’s dressmakers are fighting back with tonight’s Battle of the Champions II/Man-O-Man fashion competitions, where they’ll showcase their new summer and autumn collections. “With the state of today’s economy and the consumer conserving…
Nachtmystium returns in a different shade of metal
Black metal is a harsh mistress. Between the genre’s reputation for attracting violent criminals and racists — like the murderers and church-burners who came with the pioneering National Socialist black metal scene in Norway — and its fans’ intolerance for sonic innovation (particularly when that innovation takes the form of melody), you have to wonder…
The Strange Familiar
Technically, former Jaded Era principals Kira Leyden and Jeff Andrea haven’t completely relocated from the Rubber City to sunny Los Angeles . . . yet. After recording the You Can’t Go Back EP with producer Brian Malouf (Madonna, Michael Jackson, and Bon Jovi) in California, they temporarily moved to the Golden State to make a…
Apocalypse tonight
Tonight’s screening of Outpost 31 at The Punk Rock Zombie Bash rates a perfect 10 on Joe Ostrica’s gore-meter. It should, since the 20-minute thriller by Wooster director Dusty Austen is about a handful of survivors of a zombie outbreak that annihilates civilization. “It’s not some kids with a couple blood marks on their faces.…
The Hush Sound rebounds, with its piano player now doubling as lead singer
A couple of years ago, the Hush Sound was just another boy-girl emo band from Chicago that landed a deal with Pete Wentz’s record company. The four kids, all barely out of their teens, did the usual bump-and-grind with the industry: They released a couple of albums, they made videos, they toured, they almost broke…
Shearwater
With Okkervil River, Jonathan Meiburg plays auxiliary sideman to Will Sheff’s angsty surveyor of pop-culture surplus. As frontman of Shearwater, Meiburg strips away modern-day anxieties and gets back to nature. Specifically, he’s into birds — both the band and the title of its fifth album are named after them — and, presumably, the freedom that…
Rhymes & Reasons
Here are the ground rules for the monthly Poet’s Haven readings in Barberton tonight: You can’t wear hoodies with gang colors, and you must keep your poetry profanity-free. “I don’t want people spewing vulgarity for the sake of being vulgar, because it has to be material I can publish on the website,” says organizer Vertigo…
Danish dance-punks the Fashion put a new spin on some old music
The Fashion’s singer, Jakob Printzlau, claims that his Danish band “just is not that up on the dance-rock scene in America.” Sounds funny, coming from a guy whose group is constantly lumped in with U.S.-based indie-rock dance-punk outfits like LCD Soundsystem and the Rapture. Then again, seeing that nostalgia for the genre is approaching its…
Steraon
Steraon — pronounced “stair-AY-on” — is slowly fighting its way to the Cleveland music scene, having migrated from Doylestown to Akron, and now making regular appearances in the 216. With pro-level sound and cascading melodies, driving tracks like “Don’t Go” find balance between anthemic pop-punk and emo. Even the occasional kinda-metallic drum blast can’t keep…
Bullfrog Bash
Kermit’s cold and clammy kinfolk are hosting tonight’s Froggy Fever Pajama Party as part of the Zoo Association’s nationwide Year of the Frog conservation series. “One-third of all amphibians are heading toward extinction, an indication of the rampant environmental degradation around the world,” says David Barnhardt, the Akron Zoo’s spokesman. “Frogs happen to be the…
The Casualties
According to the late Joe Strummer, punk rock croaked when folks began “turning rebellion into money.” Somebody forgot to tell the Casualties about punk’s passing. Vicious, hard-edged, and polished as a bullet, the New Jersey natives play the role of chain-sporting hard-asses, reminding fans that punk, at its best, should be both righteous and soaked…
Liz Phair’s indie-rock milestone tops this week’s pop-culture picks
TOP PICK — Liz Phair: Exile in Guyville (ATO) Phair’s potty-mouthed classic celebrates its 15th anniversary with a CD/DVD combo that tags on three outtakes and a new making-of documentary. But the focus remains on the singer-songwriter’s blistering debut — a simultaneous hug and attack aimed at all the men she loved before. BOOK —…
Neigh Sayers
Ohio equestrian Kelley Corrigan is one of dozens of determined riders who’ll compete for the $10,000 prize in this weekend’s Chagrin Valley Hunter Jumper Classic in Moreland Hills. Other world-class athletes not in contention at the Beijing Olympics next month will also vie for the $50,000 Grand Prix show-jumping trophy. “This is the only event…
3 Doors Down
3 Doors Down’s current tour with Hinder and Staind seems an odd fit for the Mississippi headliners. Sure, all three bands play meathead rock and roll that gets fists flying and flags waving. But 3 Doors Down are nice country boys who say “Yes, ma’am” and sing songs that stick up for our nation’s fighting…
Gonzo succeeds when saluting the good doctor’s substance — his style aside
“In a nation of frightened dullards, there is always a sorry shortage of outlaws, and those few who make the grade are always welcome.” So wrote Hunter S. Thompson of the Hells Angels after riding with California’s motor-psycho Mongol hordes in the mid-1960s, a feat of embedded journalism that left him mauled, marked, and famous.…
Come Sail Away
The sounds and food of the Caribbean are showcased tonight on the Rock Da Boat 2K8 midnight cruise on Lake Erie. Once the Nautica Queen leaves the dock, KC Platinum will spin calypso, reggae, and soca tracks while you chow down on jerk chicken and a rice-and-bean combo. New Horizon, with the Crew, will also…
Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin
Usually, overly long band names convey an irritating sense of self-importance. Why else would you make someone spend a full minute saying your moniker or force fans to use some ridiculous acronym? But somehow, by about 15 seconds into “Glue Girls” — the lead track from Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin’s latest CD, Pershing…
Capsule reviews of current area theater presentations
Jersey Boys — If you’re still mourning the loss of Paulie Walnuts, the Bada Bing, and acid-tongued Adriana, you can get a bit of that feeling back — along with a hell of a lot of great music — in Jersey Boys at Playhouse Square Center. This touring production is as tight as Frankie Valli’s…
You Kill Me
Cleveland Heights author Les Roberts doesn’t get mad at his nemeses; he gets even — by killing them in his string of 14 whodunits, featuring veteran Cleveland cop-turned-private-eye Milan Jacovich. Take his latest spine-chiller, King of the Holly Hop, in which a doctor is murdered at his 40th high-school reunion. The physician is a mirror…
Jenny Owen Youngs
Jenny Owen Youngs is a guitar-wielding singer-songwriter who isn’t afraid to speak her mind. When she isn’t rhetorically asking, “What the fuck was I thinking?” on her breakthrough song “Fuck Was I,” she treats her fans to onstage rants that run the gamut from South Park to encyclopedias. The New Jersey-born Youngs even won over…
Capsule reviews of current area art exhibitions
NEW New Blood — Here’s some advice for the class of 2008 BFA graduates: Just because you’re no longer making letter grades on your art doesn’t mean you shouldn’t bring your A-game to every exhibition. Overall, the work by recent grads of area art programs featured in this show is above-average, but there are still…
And All That Jazz
During tonight’s screening of Cachao: Una Más, you’ll be able to soak up the Afro-Cuban jazz that Israel “Cachao” López made famous before his death in March, shortly after the film was wrapped. The Dikayl Rimmasch-directed doc captures the Grammy Award winner and his all-star band in San Francisco as well as interviews with López,…
