Fossil Follies
The white, sparkly pebble is just common gravel, the kind sprinkled around wishing wells and miniature golf courses. Yet John Gale studies it intently, as if it were the Hope Diamond. “Oooh,” he coos, momentarily rapt. A Cleveland schoolteacher, the man can barely walk to the mailbox without happening upon some small geological masterpiece. But…
Gorillaz
Gorillaz, the latest collaborative group assembled by hip-hop producer Dan “The Automator” Nakamura, comes on the heels of last year’s stellar sci-fi outfit Deltron 3030, which featured Nakamura, turntable wizard Kid Koala, and rapper Del the Funky Homosapien. Nakamura, who has also collaborated with Prince Paul in the Handsome Boy Modeling School and Kool Keith…
License to Swill
State Auditor Jim Petro is The Edge’s early pick in the Ohio attorney general’s race for one reason: He understands the importance of beer. Petro demonstrated his superior values last week at a fund-raiser at the swanky new Red Tail country club in Avon. For $250 or $500 per head, supporters could press the flesh…
The Pagans
For nearly two years in the late ’70s, the Pagans worked harder, played louder, lived faster, and left a messier scar on the local music scene than just about any other band could have dreamed. With feathered short hair and a wardrobe of jeans, button-down shirts, tank tops, and sneakers, the Pagans looked more like…
Hope Sinks
For the next five days, Richard Lewis will seldom leave his North Dallas hotel room, hidden away at the far end of the top floor with a view of overpasses, office buildings and distant dark clouds. He will venture out only to visit a couple of radio and television stations, to plug his four-night stand…
The Killing Fields of Lorain
Have you hugged a coyote today? In a recent Scene article [“Sprawl of the Wild,” May 10], Sarah Fenske reported that a 529-acre natural area in Lorain is the proposed target for a housing development called Martin’s Run. Hardest hit by such an expansion would be a pack of coyotes that currently roams the unspoiled…
Really Big Show
In a decade noted for such nihilistic films as The Shining and Wall Street, 1988’s Big emerged as a milkshake antidote to those bitter martinis. It’s an endearing fantasy about a 12-year-old boy who, in a fit of frustration, wishes he were “big” and magically wakes up to find himself with the body of a…
A Meditation on Good Taste
Mmm . . . mmm . . . mmm . . .” Listen closely and you can hear the mantras of the faithful, the subvocal chants that diners raise in appreciation of delicious food. Despite the pervasive background hubbub — laughter, music, and the tintinnabulation of forks upon plates — you can be forgiven, in…
They Served Us Right
The name of the downtown Hyatt Regency’s new restaurant, 1890, commemorates the year the Arcade opened; in keeping with the historical reference, the dining room’s handsome interior is accented with steel, copper, and artwork meant to evoke Cleveland’s industrial past. Probably the restaurant’s most compelling feature, however, is its large windows, affording most tables a…
Marquee Man
It’s an hour before Television will play its first and only reunion show in this country, at a Chicago club called the Metro. Some of the band’s most ardent fans — all participants in an Internet newsgroup devoted to the act — have flown in from across the U.S. and gathered at a Cajun restaurant…
Cranked Speakers
Since its birth in 1994, the Chicago-based ‘zine Punk Planet has covered a music scene that’s inextricably bound to progressive politics. The publication, winner of last year’s Utne Reader Alternative Press Award, is the subject of We Owe You Nothing: Punk Planet: The Collected Interviews, a new book whose subjects — musicians, political organizers, artists,…
Cheechless Chong
Tommy Chong has made a career out of being a pothead, and now his whole family’s in on it. Chong & the Family Stoned Band will perform Saturday as part of the Solstice Festival at Nelson Ledges Quarry Park. “It’s like an old-time vaudeville show,” Chong explains. “I do a little bit of stand-up and…
Open-and-Shut Doors
In town for the world premiere of Jaz Coleman’s Riders on the Storm: The Doors Concerto, Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek arrived at the Rock Hall for soundcheck a couple of hours before the June 8 concert. Dressed casually, he wore an Indians baseball cap and a knit shirt, unbuttoned to reveal a black T-shirt with…
Touch of Evil
Mike Mignola’s world is crawling with zombies, ghosts, demons, and Nazis. The comic book artist’s work centers on “Hellboy,” a bulky, red-skinned hero with a tail who files down his horns every morning the way most people shave. In the world of graphic art, Mignola doesn’t exactly ooze the fuzzy charm of a talking candelabra,…
Totally ’80s Live
Okeydokey. Berlin: “Take My Breath Away.” The Motels: “Only the Lonely.” Asia: “Heat of the Moment.” The Outfield: “Your Love.” The Fixx: “One Thing Leads to Another.” There you have it. Five bands, five songs. Let’s say every band gets 45 minutes. Let’s say each band’s corresponding signature song takes up 10 minutes, what with…
Pure Energy
In a year inundated with massive movies, it’s a pleasant surprise to note that a truly spectacular adventure has arrived in the form of a Disney cartoon called Atlantis: The Lost Empire. Gushing aside, let us now consider the Atlanteans, the mythic race whom co-directors Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise (Beauty and the Beast, The…
Rival Schools
The problem with the New York hardcore scene of the late ’80s to mid-’90s was that it was essentially invisible to anyone outside of the New York City metropolitan area. The news got around that some sort of scene was spawning a batch of pretty smart rough-and-tumble rock bands. But it ultimately remained a fairly…
Torpedoed in Tigerland
Joel Schumacher goes to Vietnam: What else does one really have to know about Tigerland? Schumacher, for those readers fortunate enough not to have their brains cluttered with the sort of Hollywood detritus that afflicts some of us as an occupational hazard, is the auteur behind such commercial confections as St. Elmo’s Fire (1985), Flatliners…
The Juke Joint Caravan tour
Fat Possum, a twisted subsidiary of the punk imprint Epitaph Records, is home to old-time blues purveyors such as R.L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough. Some wise guy at the label must have had the bright idea to put three of the label’s most volatile and visceral artists on a single bill and send the whole…
More Is Less
In the annals of social change, Alma Schindler is strictly small potatoes, and Bruce Beresford’s new biopic, Bride of the Wind, unwittingly threatens to erase her altogether. For those who don’t have the history of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at their fingertips, Alma (Sarah Wynter) was an outspoken party girl from a well-heeled family who, at…
Jim White
Small-voiced, low-key, and insidious, American original Jim White is a singer-songwriter who’s in touch with the national psyche in a peculiar way. His deep connection to our more demonic vernacular becomes clear on No Such Place, his second full-length for Luaka Bop. The multi-textured disc is packed with strange characters and provocative imagery, from the…
The Doctor Will Screw You Now
Stiff necks and aching backs were good to Dr. John Strom. He owned several chiropractic clinics in Northeast Ohio and lived in a four-bedroom colonial in Highland Chase, a Stow subdivision of winding, equine-themed streets. Chiropractors are not health care’s most glamorous specialists, especially here, where the twin towers of medicine — the Cleveland Clinic…
Autechre
There are plenty of DJs out there who can craft smoothly flowing sets out of rhythmically diverse tracks. But even the most freewheeling beat-mashing hasn’t prevented some listeners from becoming dissatisfied with the regimented rhythms that inform most dance music. Hence, the rise of so-called “IDM” — intelligent dance music, a body of electronic music…
The Power to Hurt
One night in 1992, Greg Brown assessed his predicament from the bathroom of a Lakewood gay bar: He was 23 years old, stinking drunk, and facing his third prison term in five years. At that moment, he also realized he was stoking a forbidden flirtation. One that could have disastrous consequences. While Brown hadn’t intended…
Travis
The title of the third album from Travis is a fitting description of the Scottish quartet. Borrowing tuneful melodies from an assortment of sources that runs the line from U2 through Radiohead, then wrapping them up in sunny, folk-rock ruminations, Travis is a faceless Britpop band playing likable but anonymous pop music. But sharp ears…
