Murphy’s Paw
Having recently stolen Shrek as a talking donkey, Eddie Murphy is back in the multiplexes again, this time as a man who can, presumably, talk to donkeys. In the course of Dr. Dolittle 2, in which he plays a veterinarian who can talk to the animals, Murphy yaks it up with creatures ranging from beavers…
2001 Scene Music Awards
As big corporations increasingly make the decisions as to who comes through town and who gets radio airplay, it’s refreshing to know that there’s still a healthy stable of local bands playing Cleveland’s clubs, even if the action takes place beneath the radar of conglomerates such as SFX, Clear Channel, and Infinity Broadcasting. In compiling…
The Mayor Who Thought He Was King
Vince Urbin’s mayoral office sits empty now, visited only by the winds that whip off Lake Erie and into the leafy suburb of Avon Lake, population 18,000. The century-old waterfront manor, only one block from the city’s inelegant municipal building, still houses the parks superintendent on the first floor. Only ghosts remain on the second.…
No Cheers for the HomeTeam
Every time the phrase “HomeTeam 19/43” flickers onto Cleveland television sets, there’s a guy in a studio who inserted a tape to make it appear. And to that guy, the slogan sounds like bullshit. His bosses couldn’t find Terminal Tower. Their home is Montgomery, Alabama, and they’ve never met most of their staff. That’s probably…
Palestine Valentine
The blond, blue-eyed man really stood out at the Arab-American family picnic. Maybe he had gotten lost on the way to the Swedish-American picnic or something. “Who is he? What’s he doing here?” Moe Rabah remembers wondering that day at Lakewood Park. Rabah asked around and found out that far from being a wayward Swede,…
Soul Brains
Reunited for the umpteenth time, Bad Brains (now Soul Brains) might have had more chances than they deserve. Since their first, self-titled, cassette-only release in 1982 (recently reissued on CD), the group has simultaneously been one of the most influential and most self-destructive bands in punk. Mixing hardcore with a righteous Rasta determination, Bad Brains…
Growing Tensions
Classic Cuts Produce won’t make anyone’s A-list of preferred employers. Wages start at a humble $5.50 an hour and ascend to an average of $7-$8 at the small East 40th Street company, which prepares fruit and vegetable trays for restaurants and institutional customers. But according to Lou Maholic, an organizer with the United Food &…
Dave Navarro
It’s just coincidence that former Jane’s Addiction bandmates Perry Farrell (whose debut comes out in July) and Dave Navarro are releasing their first solo albums within a month of each other. Both have had a rocky and productive time getting there. Navarro’s past few years, since retiring as the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ guitarist and…
Cumming Up
Alan Cumming is, in no particular order, the following: an actor, a pop icon, a Renaissance man, a sex symbol, a bon viveur and the boy next door. “I am a combination of all those things,” insists the 36-year-old Scot, who punctuates every other sentence with a sly giggle that suggests he knows something you…
Slash’s Snakepit
No one will try to convince you that Slash can outlive the legacy that convinced us to call him just “Slash” in the first place. But as Axl Rose stumbles all over himself, trying to get a depressingly “updated” Guns ‘n Roses off the ground, it’s oddly soothing to watch Slash — the erstwhile, hopelessly…
Jesus Would Be Pissed
International Churches misses the point Thank you for the insightful article on the workings of the International Churches of Christ [“The Jesus Pyramid,” May 10]. I am a former attendee of a home Bible study of the Chicago Church of Christ. I was one who enjoyed the initial contact with the church and the Bible…
Lucinda Williams
Less specific but more pop-oriented and diverse than her previous effort, 1998’s Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, Lucinda Williams’s new album is a hit-and-miss affair. Fueled by constant craving, a Tom Petty sound, and some of Williams’s most rueful words, its key problems are pacing and lyrics that seem far more generic than those…
Classics Illustrated
With the Fourth of July just around the corner, it’s time to indulge in some Americana. What better way to do so than jumping in your car and scouring the vast Ohio terrain for vintage Yankee Doodle theater? Whizzing past untold churches, contented cows, and rustic lawn ornaments, you’ll soon find yourself on the inviting…
The Shins
This is the kind of album you can listen to for days on end. Admittedly, these boys from Albuquerque have a way with a melody that sticks like a Mars Bar to your pants. There’s a lot of that sunshiny Beach Boys atmosphere that’s bound to draw comparisons to Pet Sounds as well as the…
Trattoria Mia
You know how it is when a song gets stuck in your head? How it keeps running through your mind — tantalizing you, teasing you — until your ears start to ache from straining to recapture the sound? Now imagine that same phenomenon, but this time with food rather than music. That’s how it’s been…
The Volta Sound
These guys in the Volta Sound — drummer Michael Prieto, singer Matt Cassidy, singer-guitarist Michael Cormier, bassist David Geddes, organist T.D. Vainisi, and guitarist Ben Yawns — take their retro psychedelic shtick seriously. On the back of their self-titled debut, they’ve got a photo of an old Ford van in Day-Glo lime with a mural…
‘Net Stocking
Sean Sullivan used to peddle fish off the back of a truck on trips from North Carolina to Cleveland. That little venture led to Cleveland’s Navillus Gourmet Fish Company (yes, puzzlemasters, that’s “Sullivan” spelled backwards), a successful retail/wholesale operation that in 1998 merged with Euro-USA to provide import and specialty foods to Northeast Ohio, Pittsburgh,…
God Stuff
Author Neil Gaiman is sitting in his Wisconsin home, using a flowerpot and some marbles to explain to his son the differences between English and U.S. politics. The Englishman, who made a name for himself with his Sandman series of graphic novels, often finds himself visualizing such concepts. “One day, my son came home from…
Sand Bastard
In “Yer Ropes,” a song on the out-of-print 1994 Giant Sand album Glum, Howe Gelb sings in a crackly voice about “hanging by a thread, well out on the ropes,” while Rainer Ptacek provides the eerie “dobro slippage” that whines in the background. It’s an evocative moment that could be Gelb’s life summary. After a…
Sales Pitching
Professional softball player Amy Kyler vowed she’d never leave the game. But the game almost left her. In February, the four-year-old Women’s Professional Softball League notified its four teams that it was calling an indefinite “time-out,” as league execs began working on a plan to relaunch six to eight teams in new markets for 2002.…
Foetal Positions
Jim Thirlwell, the man behind Foetus, Steroid Maximus, Wiseblood, and other post-punk industrial projects that helped shape the genre over the past decade, recently returned from a self-imposed six-year hiatus. After the release of Gash in 1995, Thirlwell stopped performing and recording to deal with some personal issues. He’s purposefully vague about the details of…
Food for Thoughtless
With his hangdog face, rumpled overcoat, and black beret, Tobias Schneebaum looks like one of those wild-eyed old men you find at, say, Public Square, absentmindedly feeding the pigeons and ranting on to exactly no one about Leon Trotsky, nuclear physics, or the ’54 World Series. Time has taken its toll, but there are still…
Pinhead No More
Johnny Ramone (John Cummings) was a punk rocker. But not anymore. Unlike many of his never-gonna-give-it-up peers, he knew when it was time to hang up the leather jacket and trade in the faded blue jeans. He did after the Ramones’ final tour in 1996. By that time, he had reached the two goals (play…
Sounds and Fury
If internal combustion ever becomes obsolete — that is, if the auto industry ever allows internal combustion to become obsolete — whatever will movies do for heartstopping drama? Hoofbeats are dramatic and the chug of a steam engine is suspenseful, but the roar of a gasoline-powered vehicle stirs the blood of any self-respecting moviegoer. The…
DJ Rap
After gravitating to the English rave scene in the late ’80s, Singapore-born Charissa Saverio quickly turned from club kid to DJ, christening herself DJ Rap. She began making drum ‘n’ bass records with producer Jeff B and learned to mix with some help from London’s Rave FM resident Coolhand Flex. Eventually, successful 12-inches such as…
The Big Swill
Now here’s a tricky one. Start with a busload of familiar and appealing stars, shacked up together for a couple of weeks in a house in the Hollywood Hills. Assign them their mission: to emulate themselves — sort of — while dutifully reminding us that human relationships can be complicated. Set the tone (Celebrity meets…
Depeche Mode
Back in the day, few keyboard-jocking new-wave hipster dudes sounded as grandiose as David Gahan cooing his way through Violator (still the best “Why Don’t We Put on Some Soft Music, Take Off Our Pants, and Just, You Know, Relax, Baby” record of all time). And few dance-floor synth epics have held up as well…
